Wildly Alive

By Lana Hechtman Ayers

PROMPT — What is Love?

after George Bilgere

I bring you to the past

where the air has its own fluorescence,

scented with lavender growing beside the porch,

woodsmoke wafting from a cabin in the hills,

hearty stew bubbling on the stove,

as you step into your grandmother’s arms.

Sometimes the feeling is exuberant.

Sometimes a handmade quilt.

But no, I bring you to a lie,

a false nostalgia,

a Norman Rockwell painting in soft focus.

All that is advertising.

All that is capitalism

trying to sell canned chicken soup

and plug-in air fresheners.

I didn’t set out to fool anyone

but here we are.

My grandmother lived in a tenement.

When I enter the graffitied hallway

of her building, it reeked of human urine

and the metallic odor of empty beer cans.

When I stepped inside her door

cockroach spray assaulted my lungs

and coughing away, I treaded lightly

lest I crunch the brittle

brown bodies crawling to their death

beneath my feet,

a sound not unlike

crushing greasy potato chips.

But here’s what I really want you

to understand, sure she was poor,

we were poor, the stew was mostly

parsnips and turnips,

and there wasn’t so much to laugh about.

But grandma’s eyes lit up

like twin pulsars the moment I walked in,

her smile a waterfall

in a hidden sunlit glade

you’d hike any distance or terrain to see,

water that can only cascade that wildly

alive after turbulent storms.

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Lana Hechtman Ayers is a cat and dog mama, sky-watcher, recovering coffee-obsessive, and former New Yorker who writes in a room over her garage in Oregon. She leads generative workshops, helps poets assemble their manuscripts, and manages three small presses where she’s fostered over 140 books into the world. Lana writes from Newport, Oregon.