Elegy for My Father’s Left Leg
I am running through doorways.
Stepping specter,
passing through hospital rooms
the way you pass through me—
your cologne never lingering long enough,
replaced by sterility, bad breath,
rot settling in something alive, in
metatarsal two.
I aimed a firecracker at a frog once;
New Year’s Eve, do you remember?
I watched its skin curl,
flower blooming from fire,
and I remembered you
from forty years back,
forty years of a life lived ahead of me,
away from me,
with the son and the daughter who did right by you,
two lives lived instead of me,
and all I do is burn for you
the way I wish you would burn for me,
only I mirror your cool disconnection,
like I want to mean it when I say
I’m crueler than you’re used to.
I cleaned your dead foot off for you
with tufts of ripped hair
and instead it came off completely—
Matins
My moments of joy last a little longer now,
Or I suppose they don’t last, but insist—
There is a delay in memory;
Uncertain as to whether I am living in a periscope still,
Looking at my life in the third person,
Rear view,
OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.
They stretch,
Grassy silhouettes like prison bars,
Shadows laid thin over ants and dried roots,
Hammered gold.
I promise you,
Something is different about me.
Clear skies affect me too greatly,
I can’t bear love and life,
And maybe that’s why I sabotage September summer,
Period of transition,
The season’s fabric fraying at the part I bit off.
-- Victoria Canales is an up-and-coming writer, musician, and artist living in Austin, Texas. She completed her undergraduate degree in English at the University of Texas at Austin in 2023. She is interested in exploring grief, life, love, shame, and her own obstacles to vulnerability. Maybe someday she’ll find peace with them all.