Narrativenortheast.com Website Review

My house burned and now your ashes are mingled with those of my home— beds and scraps of poetry and walls. The April skies are a blue hum that turns to gray water when the winds come, and the bindweed already strangles the clematis while I let it, if you were here I would lean against your strong, Austrian bones, touch your weathered face and remind you that every home is temporary, even that of body, and you didn’t have to fight your death so much, the ragged breathing and sweat in the nursing home, But I have friends and family, just not you. In the evenings the liquor soothes me, and when the sun drops over the mountains, shadows stretch into my belly and nestle in my empty br*asts that once fed my children, as you did me. I become the rain and though the ground is thirsty, I want the sun to cut through the trees and allow Father gave me a pill made of blood and rancor and he told me if I sw*llow it, an apple tree would grow in my body. He gave me a glas* of water and made me sw*llow it, and you didn’t protect me. It tasted like vinegar and metal. It grew in me and God pushed me out of the jungle into a city’s alley where discarded needles punctured my feet and the man with the green coat gave me a torn blanket. I remember how your ashes glinted warm on the Danube and carried you to the Black Sea. The only sea I know is the Saragossa Sea, which has no shore. Alicia, the highway hisses with rain and April plants its green and buds. Yesterday a poppy bloomed in the corner of our yard and I thought it looked lonely. Alicia, I want to walk with you holding hands. You look like the desert to me— chiseled cheekbones and eyes of clear, de*p night. I usually hide in bed from the night, but yesterday I drove home late and a small fox crossed the road. I wondered what it was hunting. Its eyes in the headlights reminded me of yours. You are big-boned and strong. The bears amble out of their dens. I always wonder how such large bodies can live off of berries and plants.