By: Sophia Falco
He resurfaced as I was
drowning at the park, dragging
me down further on such a pristine
day: children running about, playing hide
-and-seek, laughing, groomed dogs barking,
chasing muddy tennis balls and some not muddy
yet I tried to seek
refuge away by sobbing
on another different bench still
on land, but haven’t landed in the
present while the memory of him not
to close to home because home is undefined to
me, and I thought what if I don’t make it too, haunted
by his absence of
presence, across the other
side lies the beyond not a pond,
currently I am barely above the currents,
swirling are the whirlpools, blurring of the
now, the future much more than a distant dream,
the past raging like the river, those nightmares burst
that dam of self-preservation,
a reservation, reserved, to serve, no,
I’ve never served on a battle field, but
these demons in my mind lurk and become
bigger eating the present, and I look in the mirror
not knowing who I am, I am who I am and she doesn’t
like it! I just want an outstretched hand to grasp, and dialed
the phone to reach
my rock all alone in the
park, this mood bigger than the
horizon, to rise like the sun to rise from
bed instead of stuck stuck stuck acting like
I was five trying not to die repeating: “I don’t know”,
really I knew but there were no words in my vocabulary
to describe that immense pain, the flooding of memories
to roll the dice, the
cards were dealt not revealing
my opinion on them yet trying to
break this cycle, I will not be another
who falls, the falling of leaves, changing of
the season, to change to be the person I am meant to be.
Blogger Bio
Sophia Falco is a faithful poet since she finds poetry essential to her understanding of the universe. She is the author of Farewell Clay Dove (UnCollected Press, 2021). In addition, she is the author of her award-winning chapbook: The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2019), the winner of the Mirabai Prize for Poetry, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Furthermore, Falco graduated magna cum laude along with the highest honors in the Literature Department at The University of California, Santa Cruz. Her Bachelor of Arts degree is in intensive literature with a creative writing concentration in poetry. She is honored to be starting a highly regarded Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) Program for poetry along with a teaching fellowship she accepted for Fall 2022. Falco is on her way to make her dream job become a reality to be a Professor of Poetry.
Learn more about Sophia and find more of her writing on https://www.sophiafalco.com/ or www.pw.org/directory/writers/sophia_falco
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