by Olivia La Caprara
you said if it is anyone, it will be a man. a man, kneeling in the pews. him, standing on the stair, holding the car keys. your words are the ghosts living in my letters, special-order: drought-resistant. he has packed the minivan trunk with everything two people need for a weekend, for a lifetime, and your favourite book is on the passenger seat, dog-eared at the page that i inscribed for you, the springtime sunlight scattering softly like snow (ashes to ashes, dust to dust). but the stunted-growth ghosts refuse to die. they are too hardy from unstable seasons weathered, too grounded in the expectation of disappointment that they have settled to mine saltwater for sunlight, too adapted to sorrow that their pain is analgesic lifetimes before it is agonizing so forgive me if i cannot watch the next part: he is waiting in a white-shutter house with a wraparound porch and you are wearing the clothes passed down by churchgoers even though they do not fit. my words are the ghosts burning in your letters, forest fires you fanned with neglect, flammable myths i tried to resurrect underground while the wintertime leeward side black spruce branched out and out to meet the scattered snow (ashes to ashes, dust to dust). do not scatter yourself for me— sew a seed somewhere in my seams, in the place where my pulse once met your mouth, and look out the window from the passenger seat next year. you will learn that this place remains haunted. and what will you do? remember that seeds need to be sown. remember that ghosts want to be seen. write me a letter and ask that we meet in the spruce, say that you do not remember the words we said, that those words existed a lifetime ago. lie and tell me that words never mattered to you. and the next time we walk beside each other in step over petrichor earth i will plant my hands deep inside the silt of my pockets (ashes to ashes, dust to dust) and you will not dig them out again
Olivia grew up in the deciduous forests and sprawling cities of southern Ontario and recently moved to Alberta for her graduate studies in neuroscience and pharmacology. She is an outdoor enthusiast and adores the magic of making a home under the big blue bowl of Canada’s sky, often seeking shelter in the Rockies during summer weekends. Her recent poems are inspired by her lived experience of wrestling with a Catholic upbringing, her newfound queerness, and navigating an intensely intimate relationship with a friend, all in a very human endeavour to understand what it means to love, to pray, and to see.
Capital City Press Anthology 