Ephemeral Beauty by Ann Rhodes

We lived on a dead-end street
of sharp gravel that would stick
to the bottoms of our foam flip-flops
when we walked, and we marveled
at the prolific blackberry bushes
and the fleeting swallows
crowding the cerulean sky.
At night the heat of the Georgia air
rose to let the dewy ground cool,
lifting a thousand fireflies
to gleam like opalescent stars
over sun-singed lawns.
We huddled by the bay window
when thunderstorms hit,
watching the splitting glow of lightning
reflecting off the glass--
in the muggy veil of those evenings,
we went looking for tadpoles
in puddles left behind
and played princesses in the forest
until we were called in for dinner.

We learned too young
that beauty was always ephemeral.
We left the cobwebs behind
and piled into a too-small minivan,
hoping the journey would convince us
the swallows once darting overhead
were merely lost scavengers
and the fruit-covered blackberry bushes
no more than giant weeds.
We left a tricycle on the curb,
a collage of sidewalk chalk
suffocating the tar driveway,
strings of ivy choking the outer walls
of a house that once smelled like Cheerios
and dried maple wood.
We were no longer princesses
in the far-gone forest.
Instead, we were merely four sisters
whispering in the backseat
about how we’d divide up room
in a two-bedroom city apartment.



Ann Rhodes is an author from Southern California. She enjoys writing virtually everything from poetry to sci-fi novels. Her work appears in several publications, including Nine Muses Poetry and The Short Humour Site, and she will be publishing several books and collections in the upcoming months.