The Past Is Another Country

e.j antonio

the image in a truck’s rear view mirror

shrinking / every time she turned around 

the river splashed against the shore

released the echoes of laughter

she & her brothers left there

her mother’s garden of basil

thyme & onion joined 

in chorus with her father’s 

push mower & wild growing

grass pleading for their return

as the rope swing moved

lonely in the breeze of memory

the hours spent becoming queen

of the mid-air high jump

children play   believing

they could fly / if only her brothers

could’ve flown away

from the false accusation 

maybe the color conscious law 

wouldn’t have made them

the ghosts she would never hug

again / sitting alone in the back

of a pickup truck 

packed with remnants

of her destroyed family escaping

to a new unknown 

every time she turned around

home became a water color

melting behind a sheet

of anger & unbearable grief