COLLAPSE

Issue 5

In the rolling woods,
            A church, a sanctuary
Surrounded by a mosaic of color
            Shards of leaves, 
The canopy of     time
She felt a loss, an itch,
            To        create something in that bland,
Flat space
            1989 was the year that changed      the world,
Grays and neutrals stripped        down to
            The basics
It began with snow and knotweed,
My mothersdevolve
            into       Madness
as the dogwoods
Burst
              into white
The seventeen-year cicadas invaded, dropping like       stones
From the trees
The way she flitted       down the stairs--
            Naked
Breasts pendulous like the grandfather clock she always wanted but
            Never had
The scent of fresh paint, carpet fibers, and lumber--
            A blank canvas readied for her artistic merit
And then her burning eyes, the way she was      swept away
            to the hospital,
Shrouded in white, eyes cast to the sky
            And it wasn’t just       in her head,
            but physical, psychological.
The collapse insidious and pervasive
 as        the Berlin walls tumbled down, cars crushed      like tin cans
            ​in the San Francisco earthquake, the world       upended
A fall
            Of an    empire, an era--
A home       once a sanctuary     rendered a
            Battlefield

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L. LINDSAY's writing has been featured in The Millions, SEPIA, Hippocampus, The Rumpus, Autofocus, The Smart Set, Brevity, MER Literary,The Florida Review, Levitate, ANMLY, The Tiny Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Essay Daily, Mutha Magazine, Ruminate’s The Waking, Visual Verse, Manifest-Station, Pithead Chapel, Cleaver Magazine, Motherwell, with forthcoming work in ELJ, On the Seawall, and DIAGRAM.  

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