To Overlook

She plunges into water, feet first and naked except for her patent leather Mary Janes, shoes she found on corrugated metal in a junk yard, fearless of depth, she swims the water, then gets out to walk the silver sands in her sun-dried Mary Janes to Roadside America and its 8,000 square feet of miniature village, to get more perspective on the world she’s part of, to overlook the little village, to see the world she’s part of from a height of 5’ 8”, fearless of scale she pivots and runs to roses made of headlights, as the heels of her cracked Mary Janes begin to splay from wear, fearless of what disintegrates, as she searches in sunshine, as she searches and draws closer, as she searches and weeps for the angels in all those junk yards, in all those searches for ghosts in junk yards where she hunts to find pieces of the past she’s lost, fearless of that inscription her dead husband writes 12 years earlier, the one with her name and the names of their two kids and his own name, the names he writes in cement 12 years earlier and rings in a heart he draws with the corner angle of a spackle knife, the one he finds on corrugated metal in a junk yard, the heart he draws in wet cement as he rebuilds her kitchen that she overlooks from a height of 5’ 8”, while she stands in her broken-hearted Mary Janes and replays the scene, this time as she extends her hand to him, the one that connects from her pumping heart and through the angel that waits for him sooner than she ever imagines the angel could, to mirror the heart he draws, to mirror love, to mirror the inscription inside the heart in cement he will cover forever in ceramic tile, never to be seen again.

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Grace Maselli‘s work has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Poydras Review, Streetlight Magazine, The Penmen Review, 42 Magazine, and Barometric Pressures. Her poem, “Queen of African Violets,” was the 2019 first-place winner in the Jacaranda Poetry Contest sponsored by the Pasco Fine Arts Council and the Cannon Memorial Library at Saint Leo University, St. Leo, FL. She studied in New York City at the Writers Studio founded by poet and author, Philip Schultz. Grace lives in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. She’s at work on a new collection of poetry and flash.