by Ceridwen Hall

Self Portrait as Mental Map 

of a city you’ve returned to so often you no longer know how you know your way around. Some of the streets are new, some of the houses are filled with smoke. Floods threaten. It is, at all times, every calendar year of your life in this city, but usually only one season. The city is shaped by memory and other forces you struggle to withstand. Wind scatters leaves and blossoms; it seizes you by the ribs, by the throat. In this analogy, you are target and shadow, wall and open window. You want to retrace your steps, but they’ve torn up the road to remove lead pipes. Chasm yawns under metal plates. You consider alchemy, but feel awkward talking to ghosts. When you visit the habitats of animals and other friends, they warn you, over the dull roar of the city’s traffic: to linger is to begin, to hinge.

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Ceridwen Hall is a poet and book coach. She is the author of two chapbooks: Automotive (Finishing Line Press) and Excursions (Train Wreck Press). Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. You can find her at www.ceridwenhall.com.