Mitch Sisskind presents a poem by Erika Moya

A Trail Leading Back  

an old sage once told me that when you find someone you like, you take them by the ankles and you shake them. all their good qualities, the things you fell in love with them for, will come out of their pockets and fall onto the floor. you grab these things, he said spreading his arms wide, grab them and you take them to the bank. you get yourself one of those fancy safety deposit boxes they have way in the back, and you take these good qualities of theirs, lock them up, and hide the key. hide the key, he whispered, because there will be dark times. times when you don't exactly recall why you are with this person, this stranger. you will wake in the middle of the night, confused because you don't remember the person you are sleeping next to. days will pass when neither of you have uttered one word to the other. when this happens you are going to have to find the key to the safety deposit box. once you find the key, you are going to have to get to the bank, and unlock that box. look inside it and remember. it won't make sense at first, because remember you two are strangers. but once it does it will be like a baby’s song, a string of vowels, devoid of all consonants, like bubbles rising up into the sky and leaving a trail. a trail leading back.

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Erika Moya is a painter and writer. Her work has appeared in Qaartsiluni, the Smoking Poet, the Holly Rose Review, SN Review, the Toronto Quarterly, and Mosaic: Art and Literary journal of the University of California, Riverside. She attends the MFA program of the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Comments

[DL]

I like this a lot, Mitch. Great discovery!

[Josh Rubinstein]

I believe every word of the painter's poem and wonder whether she has written more about the safety deposit box and what is kept inside it. Thank you. Yours truly, Josh.

[Christine Chalhoub]

If only we could. Love it.

[Victoria Genericola]

So have I heard and do in part believe it., But look yon sun in russet mantle clad etc In other words, red sky at morning = sailor's warning. Hamlet act I, scene I.