Sweet purple lilacs hang on corners in exclamation,
in the barest recognition of a place. For all the lilacs dotting
the street in June, the afternoons I've run up and down,
I'm a winter guest.
I'm slick ice pooling on sidewalks, shoveled pathways
between homesteads, thick sweaters. I'm breath in air,
imagined gardens fetched with forks from jars of
green beans, climbing grape vines pressed into bottles.
I'm the last seat at the table, pressed between bodies,
the top layer of lasagna. For all the years I come back
to this one-way street, I'm a child sprinting across
the threshold, held firmly in the arms of a woman,
come home.
About this Poem
Claudia Rupnik is a writer and poet in her fourth year of French Studies at Queen's University. Her work has been published in The Undergraduate Review and The Northern Appeal and will appear in the upcoming anthology Lake Effect 10 edited by Carolyn Smart. She’s also a reporter and editor for The Queen’s Journal.
