Stephanie Woolley-Larrea is both a poetry and prose writer who has been published in Sentence,
Coe Review, Literary Mama, 400 Words, Gulfstream, Mipoesias, and Florida English. In addition to writing, she is a teacher and a mother of triplets. She is currently seeking publication for both a non-traditional memoir and a historical novel.
---------
Chrysanthemums
Driving home, we pass a cemetery
peppered with flowers—
purple, yellow, pink on green.
“That would be a good job, planting
all those flowers,” Amelia declares from the back,
a five-year-old’s quest for future employment.
How I want to see the world as she does,
not as a constant economic struggle
but as an easy balance of happiness.
I want to be with her, as she moves
through the grass, ignoring headstones
in favor of the empty plastic vases.
Infinity Minus One
There are infinity days, aren’t there? Brennan asks, attempting to count that high, frustrated that one million does not come directly after one hundred and ten. Yes, there are, I say, which I know is the easy way out. I cannot guarantee this, knowing what I know. I tell him there are, because I want him to be right, as much as I want it to be true. I knew there were infinity days, I just knew it, he says, leaning back in his car seat with the kind of smug satisfaction I had, back when I was four, back when I could figure out everything. I let the music play out beneath us, and I think I’m safe, positive he won’t ask me to sign anything legally binding, assuring him that his days are, in fact, not numbered. But wait, he says, leaning into my sightline in the rearview mirror. What is the number before infinity? It’s an excellent question. If time is infinite, and space is infinite, shouldn’t there be a place which is finite, and drops off, a line between now and forever? I don’t know, I say, after searching my memory of science fiction novels and math classes. I’m sorry to disappoint him, knowing it won’t be the last time. That’s okay, he says, looking out the window, I’m sure it’s something really high. Yes, I’m sure that it is.
Sometimes the Experience Plays Her
Sometimes the experience plays her
dances upon her soft little head
treads light upon her eyelids
as she blinks down to sleep,
the weight of the day upon
her gently rising shoulders
breathing the life of the young.
Sleep makes it insignificant.
But sometimes, and you can see it,
her eyes sparkle and dim
comprehending things you don’t notice.
Nuances in her cheekbones change.
She has gotten older under your
curious loving gaze.
In that white light that almost
slipped by you she has traveled away.
You reach out to her but it’s never
the same. She has taken control
and veered in some direction
that you have yet to find.
You’re left grasping air
in the space she’s left behind.
Sometimes, the experience plays her
and she plays back, tosses it in her left
hand as she gets ready to spring right ahead
running laughing away, dancing upon
her own soft head with light feet.