Eros Alegra

I find ZC crouched by the front gate. Bruised petals and leaves beneath her feet, stuck to her skin. Her hair wild.  A lifting of the wind carries the scent of another spring. The scent of decay and sharp green growth. Days of rain driving down petal, leaf, of turning into slick collecting in the…

I’m a blur of paint fumes held together by masking tape. I’ve been painting prayers on walls. Spreading layer after layer as I glance out the windows at the hills surrounding us, at the new landscape. Pausing to guide my daughter’s hand as she forms letters, explaining that words have power, and these words: love…

My children open their arms and my hours go diving in. This love is a gamble of amnesia; what moments will they remember? What moments are carried away like ashes? As light that has flared and gone? What burns? Some of my memories are a favorite garment worn threadbare. I have a collection of them from between…

I stop rolling paint on the door and turn to DC, my index finger raised like I’m pointing to something significant in the heavens. But the significance is the finger itself and the little white pocket it has developed at the corner of the nail. I believe its origin is dark and sinister and I’m…

  DC leans against the shovel. His flannel shirt, inherited from my dad, is cleaner than it should be but his basketball shorts are filthy.  He points to a spot in the garden between two freshly planted blueberry bushes “This good? I need to dig it deep enough for several.” He is tired. An afternoon…

Tonight the storm gathers on the roof, in the chimney, against the walls of our home. “Why is there a storm coming?” my daughter asks. I lean against the wall, arms wrapped around knees and of all the answers gathering in my roof, my chimney, against the walls of my mind, I reply, “I don’t…