THE MIST

‘What’s this place called Willow
Mist everyone keeps talking about?’

This place called home you
Built with two hands

Designs on a drafting table
Filled with wood and brick and

Stone like a body becoming. This
Place where your Caralouisa

Waits for you, wonders when you’re
Coming to sit by the fireplace

Again. This place that holds
Years, laughter, spilled red wine,

Scarves and sauces, love and bitter
Words–the things of la famiglia.

Maybe you still feel somewhere
In your chest that it’s a beautiful

Place when you close your eyes, maybe
You still hear the piano and

Smell and taste home. Perhaps
The heart can remember what the mind doesn’t.

You point to the library in
The photo, remembering, ‘This is

Worth a million dollars to me,’
You tell me from the hospital chair.

By Rachel Vinciguerra