The Nursery

Ravenswood.

Spackled in moss-hatched, epiphytic splendor,
humidity gathers the fine hairs along restless
limbs—me too, alternately thin, curly, heavily
scaled, on my bench, my back, my guard; the chain
linked curls of the Spaniard’s beard, pendants spiral
upward through bald cypress, branching sunlight,
slendering along silver tendrils—we grow aerial
roots and shelter beneath the wings of live oak.

No air. Innocent. Still—cousin-ness bonding us
against older kid oppression—

 Then, Snap!

Her ancient shadow upon us, the tyrant with her
unpredictable rule: Stops time. Her own arcana of
offensives blistering us ‘til we glisten, in what
followed, afternoon punishment

(like evangelical Sunday explosions, corporal
fathers and soldier uncles who flared like
lightning)—

but herself predictable as the afternoon storm,
thundered and struck at the nursery, her incubator,
reckoning to fill a quota of injury by inflicting upon
us enough to match her own.

---

Originally published in Alocasia, May 2025, Issue 13.

© 2025, Tom Pearson