Miracle Girl
–Adamuz, Córdoba, January 18th, 2026
Six and barefoot, you falter
along the rails like a phantom
in limbo, though you´re very
much alive. Virtually unscathed,
reporters will say, despite
the wreckage around you.
Despite the bodies, writhing
like unanswered questions,
or still as a billion-year-old
mountain. The bewilderment
of limbs you crawled over
to reach the broken window.
At what point in your search
for your family does your mind
ramshackle, fracture under
the dead weight of despair?
At what point are your thoughts
launched off their tracks?
Maybe when a barn owl
screeches, or a big rig thunders
past the tragedy that will define
the rest of your life. Soon,
all of Spain will illuminate you
in halo. Miracle girl, they´ll say.
As a civil guard leads you
away, maybe you hear voices
among the debris—your cousin,
your brother, mostly mamá
and papá. At what point will you
understand they´re phantoms
now, crashing towards you
from the wrong side of the divide?
*
Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, was published in 2025. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was a finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja” and was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Her recent work appears in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, The Indianapolis Review, and MER. She lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at julieweisspoet.com
