Transformation
For Evie, 2024
Twenty-six pieces of your mail arrived today in our box,
postmarked a year or more ago. I take them to the
post office to alert that you don’t live here, no
forwarding left. We moved into condo six weeks ago
I ask realtor who you are she knows only that
the condo was foreclosed bought at auction by
a contractor rebuilt ground up. Had it burned
down? Did you run out of money? Or did something
unspeakable happen? Next-door neighbor reports
you were a hoarder, rarely came out, lived here thirty
years. What changed? Covid? Memory loss? Why
was our condo completely updated and transformed?
Where are you now? Are you even alive?
Do you have family? Are you in a care home?
Or was that you I saw yesterday pushing an
overflowing cart of possessions on Telegraph Ave?
You have been erased, stripped bare of the
essence of our home. No history clings to the
walls. No ghosts inhabit the hallways. No
anger or grief emanates from the space. Our
home is like a garden cleared for spring planting,
fertile soil ready to receive. We are grateful.
I find a wooden mobile attached to a beam in
the crawl space, dusty with age, a winged
mermaid painted sea green and vibrant crimson.
I hang it on the sunlit patio. It moves with the
wind, is visited by wrens, eyed by squirrels.
A spirit that cannot be contained.
Ellen Gerneaux Woods is a poet from Richmond, CA, and the author of The Watchful Heart Recedes. Her poetry appears in The Leafline Magazine, Quill of the Goddess, Monterey Poetry Review, among others. When not writing, she loves to swim at The Richmond Plunge, an indoor historical pool with a mural by John Werhle gracing the entire west wall. She is on the prose staff of The MacGuffin.
