When the Time Comes to Leave

I crack open the car window, and my daughter waves hello to Flora —

the little girl in pink rain boots,

pointing to the puddle and smiling: Watch what I can do!

She jumps in so hard that muddy water splashes her round cheeks.

My daughter claps.

She remembers the way this parking lot became a pool with every rain,

and the way the city park would transform into a lake,

the moon and sun shimmering on its surface as we walked past.

I would push my children toward the water shouting:

Take off your shoes! It’s all right.

Sometimes, the sensation of bare feet against slippery grass

soothed our silent sorrows.

Others, it just felt strange, as unsettling as snakes sliding past,

threatening to strike.

I walked across the park for the first time ever with the man

who would become my children’s father.

He paused right at the part where it floods,

but the ground that day was dry.

Walnut trees marked the perimeter,

and the passing freight trains kept the time.

He wanted to do a thing where we sat

and stared, unblinking, into each other’s eyes.

My mind wandered after a while, and I watched him shape shift

into the form of a tree on fire.

Two years later, we were married,

and two-thirds of our property burned to the ground,

mushroom clouds of smoke erupting from

warehouses filled with a local farmer’s lightening-struck hay.

Now, Flora plays among the ruins.

Her family is officially the last in a decade of dreamers

to seek shelter within the shop’s apartment.

An introvert at the helm of my husband’s makeshift commune,

I officially logged the longest stay.

It is hard to know what healing looks like,

but the feeling of it descends in waves —

divorce, surgery, moving, movies,

a walk through the cemetery,

a Messenger thread gone right.

Letter-by-letter, the sign outside the shop comes down.

Fresh paint erases the red-lettered exclamation: Revolution!

from the front sliding door.

I look to society for a response to the change.

Masses of people quarantined by COVID-19

peer out from behind their masks as though to say:

We’re in this too. We’ll know more loss than we could ever hold.

But Flora just laughs as my daughter claps,

worlds of possibility rippling outward from the soles of her shoes.

This poem originally appears within my publication BAMF Mag on Medium.com. Please follow this link to subscribe to The Grey Rose Garden, where I share even more writing about the ways hope blooms in the dark.