"May 11, 2020"

by Monique Soria from Tucson, Arizona

What do you get when you cross a melon and a casual cauliflower?

Oh oh, white-gloved hand to mouth, hand to mouth, Nutcracker Ballet harlequin doll

on a burlesque show stage, shuffle side step ball change

You get the way I feel

Six-foot cane extends from curtain, yanks me offstage

This all suits me fine you know

To be on my own

To read and write and organize

Binge watch and gauge the growth of the yellow-belled esperanza bush outside my window

The rabbits were little baby bunnies when this all started

And now they’re teens, their fur still fresh, their ears silken and slightly flopping

Spring is rioutous, from tangerine ocotillo flowers and yellow prickly pear blooms

to the burgundy cholla flowers I’ve never seen before and the rattlesnake at the side of the road

to whom I give wide berth, its black and white tail atop the circles of its coiled body

As if

As if I wasn’t already somewhat obsessed with the end of things

Though ending can push us all to change in ways that look like progress

Never mind the white glove with a button at the wrist that lies alone on the pebbles

Or the salsa rueda calls - exhíbela, enróscate, dile que no - that I’m forgetting

I still remember the shy glances and smiles, the roughness and the smoothness

of all the hands of changing partners, the playful spin of a dancer testing his confidence

at the end of a song, Micaela or El Taxi.

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