The broken sidewalk that tentacles from Love Library looks the same as it always does. It is spring and life is supposed to feel new but the only salient changes are purple flowers on the trees beside the walk, gestating with varying urgencies. One is in full bloom, one is just beginning to open itself, one is barely budding. They are the Three Bears and I their Goldilocks—except nothing at all feels just right. When my tires veer onto 14th Street I remind myself—let myself be reminded my days on this road are numbered. The man on the radio sings a dirge about “the youth I used to know” and I heave and hold the steering wheel until my eyes blur. I pass Adams Street where my friend Brennen lives and consider pulling a uey just to say I like your shirt and do you want to get sushi soon? and I miss you, even though he hasn’t gone anywhere yet. Was there a time I didn’t view this graying city with love? I’m certain there were many. Four weeks to go and everything is rose colored. I focus on the road, cratered as ever. Tomorrow and tomorrow, I will revisit the trees to see how they’ve grown, ignoring the turn of the calendar, of my own spotting skin. In twenty-five days, I will throw my hat. Mourn the wasted moments. Hail the things we did. The final tree will have bloomed by then.
Currently based in Vigo, Spain, Michaela Brown is an EFL teacher and freelance writer. She is the recipient of the 2020 Marjorie Stover Short Story Award and has previously been published in Laurus Magazine. You can find her on Twitter @mikienbrown
Guest editor Denise Low, MFA & Ph.D., was Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09. She won the Red Mountain Press Editor’s Award for Shadow Light. Other books are Wing (Red Mountain), Casino Bestiary (Spartan), and The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (U. of Nebraska Press), a Hefner Heitz Award finalist. At Haskell Indian Nations University she founded the creative writing program. She is a contributing editor to Essay Daily’s Midwessay project. www.deniselow.net
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 