A Prose Poem by Gessy Alvarez
The rain cools the unseasonably hot February day. A once divine youth faces a mid-life spectacle of indecisions. Isolation that once felt like a blessing smothers the spectral fire of yearning. Strangers want you to fulfill your promise. Your desires drop twenty degrees – a frost follows. The pure will to lock the streets in black ice fails. No winter follows this swampy February glare and unidentified flying objects – missiles crashing on downy mountaintops. We stand, flies buzzing over our heads fifteen thousand feet from the sea. On our descent, cradled inside the gentle sway of a 110-year-old train, a marathoner races downhill – barefoot, heels embedded with stars. As the skylark February dies in a summery fire.
Audio available: https://gessyalvarez.substack.com/p/mid-life-february
Photo credit: Chad Fish / Associated Press.
Gessy Alvarez 