Chlorine Incantations

The sunset bleeds across backyard fences
where cicadas stutter their death prayers
Mother calls from some distant shore
& I pretend not to hear
In this memory that is all ceremony,
I telescope into water, become liquid nostalgia
The neighborhood kids whisper secrets into popsicle-stained lips
We collect fireflies & forget to punch holes
Everything I love eventually dims
Television hums static lullabies
while grandma braids my wet hair,
tells stories of her own scorched summers
when war was just a word
In dreams, I return to that above-ground pool my
cousins' laughter suspended in amber light
We are becoming ghosts of ourselves,
memories competing with time
I collect summer like bottled lightning & when winter comes,
I uncork these moments to warm my hollow bones

Avril Shakira Villar is a writer and youth leader from the Philippines. She is a mentee of the international organization WriteGirl LA. She won first place in the Poetry Competition by Beloved Summer Zine. Her poems are featured in printed books of RCC Muse and Arcana Poetry Press, alongside 21 poems, a song, and an essay published online in various international literary magazines.