Where I stand, I’ve stood before, morning dishwasher fed and shouting
that new ache that belies its quarter century age. Just this morning
I stood here, like some garden grief, the larva of which hasn’t chosen yet
particle or wave – yes, I feel that small sometimes. I memorize the cracks
on every tile, the melodrama when the varied thrush thinks it can fly
through glass. There was once a girl who went home to dinner. A horse
who followed me after we fell together in the sawdust. In that moment we
were both idea of the particle, the breath of the wave. There was a boy
and he is our boy, who laughed as he walked backward along the board-
walk, a moment where waves crashed several rockfalls below, a second
where I stepped out of my particulate self to grab him. Oh, the lesson you
learn having claws, having skin. Every morning I roam with stones in my
little box of matches. I float above myself, watching the Earth align
in spherical music with some unknown planet like a dime aligns
with the correct slot. There is too much morgue these days, too many
statistics screaming mornings and evenings on the news, too few forget-
me-nots fragmenting my free days, my freedom. I’ve also stood long
in the Museum of I Don’t Know, and its satellite gallery, Brain Not Working.
I keep remembering how the girl never made it home in time for dinner,
the photo in the paper, how she was met by medics after darting between
cars instead of dimensions. Hello, I hope you are still here to say good boy,
hope, where you stood then, stardust in your pockets, you live today.
Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press). Ronda’s current manuscript was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize. She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Fugue, Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered.
Image: “Palm Trees” by Antony Burt
Pine Hills Review 