A Letter Addressed Only To You
All these years, I’ve been meaning to buy you a new camera.
I dropped yours outside Apalachicola.
With sweaty palms, it slipped right through.
All these years, I’ve been meaning to box a new one up
with a letter addressed only to you
about how frightened I was hearing the metal
crack against parking lot asphalt
like my little body when you pushed me once
to be better at hitting a ball over a net.
Here’s what I know:
cameras capture what you can see in a moment.
There were beautiful flowers planted at the edge of that forest,
ground orchids and pitcher plants with mouths open for rain.
If this were a poem, I might say that,
because the camera broke,
instead of capturing images of our hike through the forest
I got planted there with the flowers.
I am still there to this very day.
But this is not a poem.
It is a letter addressed only to you.
Memorial Tree to My Patrilineal Line
in that Jacaranda lives
several thousand families
of ants and other beings
with their own concepts
of what makes a good day
in the Poinciana’s fruit
unimaginable potential
if only we learn from it
and when the flowers fall
know new ones are to come
at the bending of a palm
I come to you with hope
you won’t quite understand
but I’ll keep coming home
and trying, trying, trying
Marina Ramil is a writer and student from Miami, FL with the strangler figs and paper-flower bougainvilleas. They have had work published in Stoneboat, South Florida Poetry Journal, OxMag, Astrolabe, and elsewhere. They believe in liberation for Palestine, DRC, Sudan, and oppressed and occupied peoples everywhere. You can find more information, including their socials, at marinaramil.com.