by Amanda McLeod
When the Virus Goes Away
They talk about tomorrow with the certainty
of seasons, a faith so transparent my hands
pass through it, as if traversing a curtain of water,
when I reach toward their fallen masks.
We come here every October when winds
blow on late afternoon sunlight ladled
into patches around the square, and the trees,
near to buckling, have begun shedding days
and months, leaves the crackle of bone, echo
of breath. In my children´s wake, the regret
I thought I had swallowed in fragments
while lingering over precautions, little half-truths
and too many maybe next years scarred all down
my throat. Mommy, look! they say, breathless,
and I slip on last year´s face, the one that urged
them to bask in earth´s wild bounties,
no second thoughts or worst-case scenarios.
Fear still crouched in shadows, waiting.
They used to do this with friends, think
a chatter of squirrels clambering for the largest
acorns, which they´d paint at school the next day.
Today they are alone. In a few minutes,
hand gel will blur all traces of play.
On the way home, their pockets will sag
for want of treasures left behind.
How they shuffle colors out of all this gray,
read the future in the tarot of the wind
is beyond my comprehension. But what if
they´re wrong? If what they see is a wisp
of the past, ghost children with faces
much like their own, come to taunt them
with scenes from a life no longer theirs?
Julie Weiss´s debut chapbook, The Places We Empty, will be published by Kelsay Books in July 2021. She was a finalist in Alexandria Quarterly´s first line poetry contest series and for The Magnolia Review´s Ink Award. A Best of the Net nominee, her recent work appears in Perhappened, Emerge Literary Journal, and Dust Poetry Magazine, among others, and she has poems in many anthologies, as well, most recently Floored, edited by Betsy Mars. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children. You can find her on Twitter @colourofpoetry or on her website at https://julieweiss2001.wordpress.com/.
Amanda McLeod is an Australian creative. Her work has appeared in many places including CRAFT Literary and Emerge Journal. She is the Managing Editor of Animal Heart Press and author of the flash collection Animal Behaviour (Chaffinch Press, 2020). Cheese, coffee and quiet places make her happy. Find out more at amandamcleodwrites.com