Sequel to the Woman with the Suitcase - Sharon Bard

[Larry Robinson]

Sequel to the Woman with the Suitcase


  October 2017: after the Tubbs fire:
​I had become the woman with the suitcase, not grasping my grandmother’s adventure
​to get out but learning to navigate my own where I could not go back in

the same purple suitcase sits
opened on a wooded floor
twenty-four months later

I found a way back in
carved out a tenuous sense of place
and though flames threaten to annihilate once again
there’s a new sensation inside
not intimidated by Nixle warnings, smoky air
the sounds of air tankers flying overhead

this time I will not be broken by conflagration
I have traveled the familiar road before  
I know how to prance like a bedraggled marionette
through the insurance hoops and debris chaos
I know about wattles and how to be patient
I know how to say no, to say not yet, to friends meaning well
I know how to lie low
comfort a pounding heart
be with a screaming amygdala
I know how to be scared  

this new house may become cinders
but today I’ve got a compost pile and a piano again
a perky begonia start unfurls mightily
next to the N-95 mask
grass roots communities are
mushrooming through the
backdrop of global fragmentation
soothing embers still sparking within

in the midst of danger I am surprisingly calm  
my head is clear
if need be I will start over  
and over again
like breath  

	- sharon bard
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