Leaving
Next spring my grandfather’s trellised pink roses will bloom without him.
My husband prunes the canes for him, anyway.
My grandfather’s house shrinks in too much stillness. I miss
his scent mint candy and Old Spice.
Where is the pillow from his chair?
From the front porch I watch barges on the river at the edge of town.
The sound of their horns pushes us to leave and the sunrise follows us
as we make our way from his house, our destination hours,
hours away. The car shifts to second gear, climbs the highway ribbon
through rain and Forbes Trail, and we talk of those who shoved and pulled
their mud-clogged carts and muddied horses up mud-slugged paths,
around immovable boulders, no rest, left those they loved
to break their way to the unknowns.
We too are cut off
from family.
I keep my thumb on an old map, count off small and smaller towns we pass
Berkley Springs Jimtown Burnt Factory
Now thumb on Dismal Swamp—how bad could it have been
to camp along its edge,
how lonely, and what happened to the person
who so damned this place?
Laurel Szymkowiak is a poet from Western Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Cagibi Literary Journal, Gyroscope Review, Twenty-two Twenty-eight, and Voices from the Attic, in addition to other publications. Her chapbook, What Choir of Reality Will Sing Today?, received Honorable Mention in the Cutbank Chapbook contest, 2021. She is a regular participant in Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops.
