Women's History Month: Wednesday, March 24, 2021: Nydia Rojas' poem "Until This Moment"

                                                   © 2021 marie c lecrivain
 

Until This Moment

 

Forget everything you’ve known

until this moment- the unblemished

apples- smooth and shiny-

 

the tempting oranges- their peel

bright and warm as if sunshine

had just discovered them-

 

the luscious strawberries, their deep

red, looking as if it had just come

from a farm located at the edge

 

of town, not from distances

involving days of traveling

through several highways.

 

Forget breathing is the task

that keeps you alive- what helps

you face each day-

 

your face exposed to rain, to snow,

to chilling winds, to a warm spring

carrying a kiss-

 

Forget that breathing used to be

what you did naturally, besides those

other busy tasks- going

 

to the grocery store for milk

and bread- always aplenty- until

this moment – or the drugstore

 

if you needed refills or beauty

products- or the hair dresser-

another way of buying beauty

 

or walking to the park without

having to worry about doing the math-

particularly measurements.

 

You walked- end of the story.

Summer had the added beaty

of wild sunflowers

 

in bloom- but now you must look back

and front, measure and keep your distance

and when you come to the sunflowers,

 

they seem to be the only ones around,

the only ones that will hear your voice-

and the wind swirls around the blossoms

 

as if gathering strength to echo your thoughts-

Thank God for blooming things

that do not mind our touch.

© 2021 Nydia Rojas

Nydia Rojas’ work has been published, among many other literary magazines, in the Wisconsin Academy Review, International Poetry Review, Revista/ Review Interamericana, and Palabra. Her work has also appeared on line in poeticdiversity, Your Daily Poem and Rigorous and in the anthologies Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest and I didn’t know there were Latinos in Wisconsin. She is the author of the chapbook Stealing Daylight.