1941 (But what of the rain?)
Was it cold?
Of course it was—
March in Sussex,
after all.
Did you see the
Lightning
as it approached?
I know you did.
And did you hear the
thundering—
rumbling—
hellfire exploding above you
in the darkened basement?
But what of the rain?
It drenched you—
soaked through your
coat, flattened
hair against
forehead.
Were the stones
heavy
as you strode in—
silt at weak ankles,
water above buckling
knees.
They felt cold, too,
I’m sure—
ice, ice, ice in your
pockets.
But what of the rain?
Did it weigh you down,
drag you down into the
dregs of the River?
Was it warm?
Mycelium
Standing in the same meadow
as all those times before,
transient and not quite
rooted in place,
I look down and
consider a familiar sight—
Toes and soles,
callused by these 30 years,
cold and pressed down into
the strange warmth of this grass,
their comfortable friend.
Dirtied and
sometimes bruised,
even bloodied and scarred,
held and kissed by lovers,
caressed and healed.
New beings, faces,
new iterations of self,
appear across the old field,
embedded in that fresh grass,
busying themselves anew,
nearly identical but
never quite the same,
not really.
These mirror-imaged brothers,
those who have walked
through towns and across campuses,
to bus stops and corner stores,
who have carried me
across bridges and borders.
Long and sturdy,
permanently altered by those
shoes too small,
they step toward strange worlds.
Those old filaments
ever connecting those lives
to past selves,
invisible and buried below,
here under this earth.
John C. Polles is an editor from Northeast Ohio whose creative work has appeared in Rubbertop Review, Kissing Dynamite, Queerlings, Nightingale & Sparrow, and more. A graduate of Kent State University at Stark, he previously served as Editor-in-Chief of Canto: A Magazine for Literature & Art. John currently works in marketing, and you can follow him on Instagram @jcp_writes.