“…Forgiveness
is a lizard squirming”
~ Javier Zamora
In a box, we find some of the last
letters she wrote to us: thin paper
we called onion skin, blue inkblots
every few lines. She said sometimes
she wrote them at the post office,
standing at the counter: umbrella
in one hand, stamp at the ready.
We don’t get them anymore— tarsiers
with coffee bean eyes, a volcano’s
perfect cone; silhouettes of out-
rigger canoes at sunset. Where we walk
in this neighborhood, towering magnolias.
We remember the ones in the neighbor’s yard
across from our gate— how the eldest
daughter would bring some half-open
blooms to her, and she’d place them
in a bowl of water. In the morning,
their scent a heavy damask
over everything in the room.
In response to Via Negativa: Black site.