Gaby Garcia: Heat

When the world burns, we will be like the women

of Pompeii who left their bread loaves to bake—

our laundry mid-cycle, newspapers turned

to the op-eds, windows open to catch a breeze.

A show of unstoppable life—how could we keep

feeling for one another, flailing in the pale spring

morning like perfect idiots. How could we water

the flowers when the flowers would soon be ash—

.

It’s an act of hope to have children, my mother says

on the phone. I peel a mango. I pull a mess of colors

from the dryer and wash my face as though it’s been

somewhere new. I live and live and live.

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Gaby Garcia’s work has appeared in North American Review, The Iowa Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Host of the podcast On Poetry, she served as a Lucie Brock-Broido Teaching Fellow at Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn.

Copyright 2020 Gaby Garcia