Sometimes I remember painting my new room
And buying new sheets and giggling at the catchphrases:
“Dream a little dream or party in the house,”
“Hooray for gray, down with brown.”
Bookshelves in the middle of the room,
Plastic covering everything,
Walking through like a music video or a dream.
My sister was getting ready to move away.
And I’m tempted to ask my mother:
Did you know?
Did you see it coming,
The devastation, the horrors
That lay ahead?
Because hindsight tricks the brain like that,
Like there must have been a sign.
And I think we also just like to believe that
Mothers are magic
And can sense every wonderful and
Horrible thing.
But I know the answer.
If she had seen it coming,
She’d have stopped it.
Elizabeth Day is a writer who’s yet to meet a genre she didn’t like. She is a graduate of Southern Utah University with a bachelor’s degree in English education with a creative writing emphasis and double minors in theater and film. Along with publishing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in many journals and magazines, she is a regular contributor for the Hey! Young Writer blog and is most recognized for her work as a boy band scholar. Her debut poetry collection, Random Poetry, is out now. You can find her on Instagram @itsanadventur.
Featured image by Joseph Perez on Unsplash.
