ADELINA ROSE GOWANS
september in savannah
little star, today i cobblestone-stumbled into a puddle
of leaky car gas and the evening downpour. felt the city
sink deep in my sandals. truth: when it rains here,
it rains so hard the roads remake themselves—furling
and unfurling their one-ways and bike lanes into a body
knotted anew. but that’s for the commuters to figure out
tomorrow. tonight, i will swim through the spanish moss
and pricey parallel parking to find my way home to a home
that is only half mine. a second home. a big, small home.
a home with significantly more or less light pollution
depending on where you’re from. more for me. still, when
the cloud cover cracks above turner bridge, i will wade
to watch stars crawl from the splinter of clear sky. i will
remember coming of age in a drought state: summers
upon summers of dust heavy roads, tapestries of burnt
corn, coastal bermuda dead in the field by the driveway.
how even when the heat pressed like a thumb into our
fresh wound, the night sky was so clear we could see
the milky way, see the constellations dancing, see a
different, droughtless planet where the corn grew tall
and wedding ring golden—all with our naked eyes. here,
the supernatural isn’t so easy to spot, but it’s all around
us nonetheless. it catches the night train as the second
wave of thunderstorms roll in, just as the knots of the city
finally begin to settle. as the whistle howls and the stars
sulk away and the clouds reform at midnight, i pull back
the curtains to watch the roads begin to change again.
little star, i have changed so much and not changed
at all. i am sitting at home inside a knotted city.
there is a home city sitting knotted inside me.
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Adelina Rose Gowans is a writer and student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Poetry Society of England, and she is published or forthcoming in Ambit Magazine, Barely South Review, Scholastic Best Teen Writing 2020, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Zone 3, and elsewhere. She edits EX/POST Magazine and Pollux Journal, and has been nominated for Best of the Net twice. More of her personal projects and resume can be found at https://www.adelinarose.me.