Veronica Good

Elegy for Home, or Something Like It

Some part of Columbia Dr still exists
in my bones, grew up in me like rot
or maggots, the shrapnel of driveway grit
under the skin of my knees—we jumped
speed bumps on bicycles, so we could fly.
 
A man tells me about a house he lost
when his grandfather fell asleep
for the last time, 8,000 miles away
in South Africa. He tells me not to sleep
on the floor or you’ll wake up with snakes.
 
Even with the distance between us,
I can still hear the door creak, the windows
slam, the sizzle of the electricity going out,
feel the water running cold in the darkness,
Columbia Dr’s final exhale.
 
There was a crab apple tree in the front yard,
cut down to drag the house away like a carcass.
The splinters are still underneath my fingernails.
There were lions, he said, we pet a lion,
and my grandfather killed it.

Veronica Good is a poet and fiction writer. She is Managing Editor of Showstopper Magazine Online and writer for its print sister Showstopper Magazine. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Archarios and Tempo. When she isn’t writing, she is taking care of her plants and her Burmese python Fitz.