August 2013–August 2014
The sound of the
mailbox like the clanging gates of Halloween when all the souls pass
through: reverberation, the metal
mouth’s clamor against the hot, late-August air. Bug rabid. Making me certain
someone’s left a present in it. The sort I would never want. A rotten apple. A
severed finger. A vial of cyanide.
Why, August? Why
this homicidal tumult?
I left my career
as a special education teacher last August. On the swings, at the carnival,
where my husband took me for candy apples and solace, I begged the wires to snap.
A momentary fling into the air. The handicap of my life flowing away in one
long arc. A final glimpse of the Ferris wheel. The smell of salt and
perspiration.
And, yet, when
my husband stood up on that self-same wheel, its slowly turning dharma rocking
my physical existence near to tipping over, I felt life’s quivering pull, the
assaulting umbilical cord of the earth demanding me to stay.
To sweat out
another August. To hear the mailbox clank like the hinges of the gates of life.
Actually opening. Actually remaining open. No poison left in the mailbox, or
left in the chambers of my still beating heart.
Alicia Cole
Alicia Cole is an accomplished poet, fiction writer and editor. Her most recent work was published by Wayward Sword. She has writing forthcoming in Atlas and Alice and Blossomry.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6470571.Alicia_Cole
Tags:
Short Fiction