Calla lilies 
the colors 
of dusk

As young Tina readies to board ship for America with her parents and younger sister, she is forbidden to embark due to a contagious eye disease. Tina, who has never been separated from her family, is escorted away by nuns, relatives who will look after her needs for sixteen long years.

From balcony to balcony 
			the twists and turns  
		of a grapevine

She knows who we are, the withered woman draped in black from shawl to shoe. Sure-footed, she approaches down the sage-scented path.

With fingers that know hard work, she touches my husband’s face, repeats in amazement, il figlio di Tina, il figlio di Tina (son of Tina). In a dialect familiar to my husband’s ear, she tells us his mother was her dearest friend until her father came one October night to steal her away.

MaMa Papa 
the names she never 
got to speak

The widow pulls a tatted handkerchief from her deep pocket, a silver dollar tightly knotted within—a memento from the childhood friend she would never see or talk with again.

From its crater the faraway glow of Etna

Alexis Rotella

has published 43 books; her latest, Milkweed (Brooks Books Haiku, 2024), received a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award in 2024. Alexis is reinventing herself as a widow and lives with the ginger cat Colby in Greensboro, NC.