by Julie Weiss
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Photo by Seema Miah at Unsplash |
It snowed last night, an unusual
enough flurry in our part of Spain
to make the news. Downstairs,
my children pelt each other
with snowballs, their voices
all sparkle and windchime.
The sky, though gray, has no
reason to grieve. I stack dishes
in the sink, sweep up crumbs,
grumble, because who doesn´t
grumble about housework?
If a bang knocks a flock of birds
off course, I assume it´s a car
backfiring, no need to scramble
outside in pajamas, search
the snow for blood. It´s easy
to chide your children for tracking
mud inside when a government
thug isn´t kicking down your door.
Easy to indulge in a cup of hot cocoa,
extra marshmallows please, when
your neck isn´t crushed under
a state-sponsored knee. Tomorrow,
they´ll shove another child into
an unmarked van. Another child´s
mother will vanish, or die. Here,
far from my homeland, the sidewalks
will have frozen over. We´ll glide
to school, graceful as skaters,
hoping not to break any bones
on the hard, hard ice.
Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection, 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 February, 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 she was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Recent work appears in ONE ART, Stone Circle Review, Gyroscope Review, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review and MER. She lives with her wife and children in Spain.
