Chella Courington

Night Descends

I tell the truth      about my mother
in poems      she’ll never read

How she calls often      at sunset
words slippery      slurred

Sliding through thirty years      lost
in love      drowned in Chardonnay

Yesterday      home early
she turned the lock      found him

Naked      another woman
reaching      for cover in their bed

Mother threw the key      screaming
again      fucking asshole  

How she calls today      at noon
words dodgy      but deliberate

Treading water      long enough    
her voice      breaks

Fireflies

Sight dims after twenty years
sewing cotton under fluorescence. 

In fingerless gloves, she threads the eye, 
prays for easy passage.

Glint from the silver thimble reminds
her of glow worms in a Texas summer.

Specks of light on pinewood,
brown iris rimmed in white.

She longs to be above the factory glare
where sunlight rolls through mist.

Rising from her bone, warmth spreads
like manna’s sweet, clear juice.

Tamarisk petals fall, barely touch her body,
blinking like fireflies.

Chella Courington (she/her) is a writer and teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong Quarterly, Lavender Review, and Hecate. A Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets Nominee, Courington was raised in the Appalachian south and lives in California.