About the Feature
Before stamping out her own breath, my mother
rehearses the act in tiny permutations. Flowers
assailed by some rare malevolent illness
are mercifully plucked from their beds.
Family photos are similarly liberated, one day
collaged in cracking and scrupulously assembled
volumes, the next scattered over floorboards
without respect to date or theme. I am 25.
There’s little sadness like finding your earlier selves
undone, missing from trustworthy locations:
astride the carousel horse, under the red lightness
of a beach pail. Worse still: the thoughtful unmooring
of one body from another when they’ve planned
to huddle together for years piled on years.
About the Author
Suzanne Manizza Roszak’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and Third Coast. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine and teaches writing and literature in California’s Inland Empire.