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Decades Later, You Misremember Wildflowers

by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Maybe borage, rock rose; maybe wild carrot, gorse. In retrospect, daisy, poppy, marigold.

Some miscalculation left a bit of earth cracked and concrete-hard but vacant,

yours. You were an only child, prone to lush hallucination. Now you

think of that abandoned lot and misremember fields, wildflowers.

Call it solastalgia. Every childhood is unreliable.

Did you imagine it?

Could you not have sworn to being five years old, feeling as golden and adrift as pollen?

Why would you have been alone? But where else would you have learned

to comb the litter-rusted world for hope? No one can tell you.

Maybe it happened like you thought or maybe you just gathered memories

like a bouquet of shards: glass, plastic, stone—strewn and demolition-dusted.

The thing about the past is in it you believed so much was possible. There might have been

creeping thyme, reseda, mallow; verbena, agrimony, lavender.

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, writer, photographer, and teacher. She is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops and a reader for Split Rock Review/Press. Her work has appeared in a variety of venues online and in person. Violeta lives with her family in Western Pennsylvania. You can find her online at https://www.violetagarciamendoza.com and on IG @violeta.garcia.mendoza.

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