the mundanities

by Laura Craft Hogensen

Spring catches me like an ambush 

The trees are a riot of pink and green

I raise my head and straighten my shoulders and set my eyes forward like I’m facing down an enemy volley

Lately, I’ve been shrinking from punition

Curling in upon myself

Kneeling in empty bathrooms, keening, with my face in my hands

Leaving salty puddles spattered on the floor

Grief is a season I’ve discovered

It’s a place – Eliot’s wasteland – unreal and underwater-silent

It’s where I’ve made my home

A creature of hollow cheeks and ragged nails,

I tread trackless sands, black depths

A city of woe, of sparse winter light

My bed is narrow

My meals are meager, and the taste of ash fills my mouth

Yet the vernal call reaches me, buried as I am

The sunlight, dropping down like gold coins, glimmering in dark water

Above, the earth is verdant, stirring

One day, we’ll sit in the soft sunshine and you’ll ask me what I lost

I’ll take your palm and put it to my chest

Covering up the hole that the spring breeze blows through

It was here, where your hand is now

I had it all, right here

Laura Craft Hogensen is a writer and pastry chef who lives in Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the ways that memory can shape who we are as individuals, lovers, and partners, as well as how our personal narratives influence our interpretations of past, current, and future relationships.