Our family arrives in the field after dark. Though it isn’t really dark—a streetlight illuminates the alley, the sun hasn’t quite released the horizon. My children are giddy with invisibility. I play tag with my daughter, sing call-and-response while we weave shadowless paths. I stretch my arms and claim I am flying to the moon. Does flight care if children cling to my legs? Past selves are as imperceptible as the Milky Way in the middle of the city. How tall are 15,000 darknesses? Can they take me close enough to Jupiter to see its storms with my naked eyes? Surely one of these stars looks for me alone and wonders.
New memories for dark fields
Last updated on December 6, 2021
Jessica Coles (she/her) is a poet and editor from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Treaty 6 territory), where she lives with her family and a judgmental tuxedo cat named Miss Bennet. Many years ago, she got a B.A. in linguistics that she currently uses to write love poems. Her work has appeared in Prairie Fire, Moist Poetry Journal, and You are a Flower Growing off the Side of a Cliff: a chapbook about mental health and resiliency (League of Canadian Poets chapbook series). Her first chapbook, unless you’re willing to evaporate, is available through Prairie Vixen Press. She often tweets micropoems and creative encouragement as @milkcratejess.