By Sofiya Ivanova 

Your blue house is so much bluer now.

Your sister peels the drooping
Googly eyes off of the mirrors.

Your father folds the towels
That you stationed at your bathroom door
To watch over me while I showered,
Their fuzzy uniforms freshly washed.

Your mother strips the sheets off your twin-size bed
Where we waxed and waned each night,
Scooting over to save each other from falling—
A mattress moon going through its phases.

Cardboard boxes
Spread their flaps,
Offering to carry all that is
Too heavy

(Except the orange pill bottles,
Thrown out half-empty.)

I wonder if, somewhere between your
Patterned cargo shorts and swim team hoodies,
My pair of purple Woxers
Cross their fingers and hold their breath—

The ones you said winked coquettishly
From below your waistband
While you did pull-ups at the Pathlight gym,
Making the other patients tease you—

Still smelling like lavender and chlorine
For a little while longer,

And then never again.

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Sofiya Ivanova (she/her) ‘27 is a lifelong “rhyme-writer,” as she declared at just three years old. Now her work has been published in Perception magazine, several anthologies, and in a solo collection, Hindsight. Having immigrated from Russia as a child and overcome Lyme disease as a teenager, she received the prestigious Coronat scholarship to study psychology and creative writing.