The m all
When I drive my daughter to swim practice three times a week,
we see machines grinding the remains of the mall into gravel.
I am not much of a mall person, and yet it was a place
where I shopped for work clothes and for maternity clothes,
where I met my friend to walk laps when the weather was unsuitable,
where I took my kids to jump around in the play area on rainy days,
where I paid a dollar for us to squeeze into the little mall train,
where the driver gave the kids a dum-dum lollipop after the ride,
where we trick-or-treated once or twice, weirdly, amidst the Christmas decorations,
where we excitedly saw Santa walk by one time when we were on the tiny train…
Now in that space there is just open air, piles of broken concrete and pyramids of gravel.
What does it mean that a place can exist and then not?
Then I think of all the homes, buildings, places of worship torn down or bombed or burned up,
and it is too much to think of them all– sacred spaces all crumbling like that, all turning to piles of rubble,
only remaining as memories in our minds,
which will one day also be spaces turned to dust.
-Sera Arcaro (12/20/22)
While I'm sharing my poems of life and death, here's another poem I wrote on the same day, although it was based on a note I dictated into my phone on a walk back in mid-September. (There's nothing like having a bunch of mid-term essays to grade to spur my creativity in a spasm of productive procrastination.)
The last time
On my walk
I passed by a park
And I saw parents
Pushing their kids
In the swings.
And I remember that.
I know how it feels to push your child
Dangling in the air
Held up by chains
Happy to be oscillating.
But I can’t remember the last time I did that.
You don’t know it’s the last time when you’re doing it.
You don’t know it’s the last time your child will sit in your lap.
You don’t know it’s the last time you’ll read them a bedtime story.
You don’t know it’s the last time for almost everything in life.
And it’s better that way
Because otherwise we’d spend our days crying
Like I did
When I passed by a park
On my walk.
-Sera Arcaro (12/20/22)
