Time and Space

“Swore I could feel you through the walls, but that’s impossible.”
               ~ Phoebe Bridgers

The trees are always on the cusp
            an ending & an entrance
warm winter       cold spring.

Light in the window brings soft morning
in a smoky rented room        galley kitchen overlooking the yard
            bike fallen near the shed        basketball in the garden.

Tonight could be a night on Magnolia Drive—
baby swimming in my bed—
a night on a chair in a private room
crash carts racing by the door.
Night alone in a king-sized bed
burning from within
phone on the pillow
everything is electric.

Stone steps from the Hall
chapel bells tell the hour but not the year.
This could the time they boarded up the library
or the day I fell and skinned my knees.
Today is four years ago        my son is on the line
saying that people are dying in Italy
and I should lock the doors.

Today is tonight
and my son is on the other side
of the moon        he’s sleeping in the room behind my bed.
He’s shooting a basketball that never stops arcing over the backboard
burning as it moves across the sky.

*

Maria McDonnell lives in Pennsylvania with her family and dogs. She works at Albright College where she teaches English classes and works as a student success coach. She has published poems and essays in various print and online journals including Motherwell, Rat’s Ass Review, The Elephant Journal, Paradigm, Steel Point Quarterly, and Parlor. She was included as a featured reader in a 2019 production of Listen to Your Mother. In 2009, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry book, First I Learn My Name, was published by Foothills Publishing in 2008.