Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
On a hot summer afternoon, after a day of playing in the sun but before retiring to play video games, my mother would always shower. She loved spending time with us on those rare free days when all five of her girls were home, and she wasn’t working one of many jobs she held down simultaneously to provide. Our job was to set the living room up, since she didn’t understand and wasn’t willing to learn how to work the equipment. She would emerge in a puff of steam and a waft of perfume. Unwilling to wear shorts outside, those days she was even willing to don a light summer nightdress. We each peeled off at different times in the night, smart enough and independent enough to dictate our own bedtimes. With a yawn, I’d announce my departure. My mother was never short on hugs, pulling me in and holding me, understanding of the importance of that contact. Rich vanilla and rose and a creamy, heavy shea butter: the last things I’d smell for the night.
When riffling through the cabinet before moving out, I discovered the exact lotion she would use. Her ‘yes’ when I asked to take it was distracted, unaware of the significance. Although, I don’t use it much.
Down University Avenue,
Past the Cub Foods
And the Caribou coffee
Lies Poetry Lane
The words are etched
Onto immoveable concrete
A community’s love bared to the world
Yet the sky tests the citizens,
Opening a flurry of thick flakes
Fitting to the compressed letters
Slowly taking up space.
The prose stands out in white
Glittering under streetlamps
And porch lights.
Feet clad protectively shuffle along the lane
Pausing at the words
Before stepping
Unreading
Packing the snow in deeper.
Gobs of white yet fall
Burying Poetry Lane
Burying the hearts of those
Brave enough to cement the truth
Until one gloved hand
Warmly brushes aside the blanket
Shedding light on the community, and
Poetry Lane, at least for a moment.