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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
On the night your mother died
you looked like a lady,
twin Chuck Taylor's staring blankly back at you in
the bathroom mirror of the gym.
You leaned your forehead against the cold glass
and exhaled,
blue cigarette smoke circling your neck.
When your father called we
swerved home on black laughter,
fingers crossed beneath our seatbelts.
I remember the watered-down soda,
The pulse from above.
The view from the bottom of your staircase,
and your mother's body,
still warm between white cotton sheets.
Alyssa Young is an aspiring creative writing student at UC Santa Cruz. She has been writing poetry since she was eight but has only begun to truly find her voice within the past two years. This is her first submission to a literary journal.