A Villanelle for the Ones Who Know by Erika B. Girard

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A Villanelle for the Ones Who Know
by Erika B. Girard

I feel a change in the air today, like a mist, and my heart slows.
It’s not a strong mist, but it’s a mist I’ve longed for like the dawn.
This is the mist of two decades struggling to fall like ash on one who knows.

Do you ever feel a mist and wonder if the ash will drift to rest upon your toes?
I wonder, too. This morning it burned like fire for a moment before it was gone.
I feel a change in the air today, like a mist, and my heart slows.

The mist brushes in on a gentle wind, sprinkling me. It carries no more woes
than the air of familiarity that rests so warm and thick and strong.
This is the mist of two decades struggling to fall like ash on one who knows.

The wind will not dispel the mist because that’s how nature goes—
a testament to its persistence, like a marked-up wall. (Or maybe the crayon.)
I feel a change in the air today, like a mist, and my heart slows.

It reminds me that life goes on. Springtime will return with the mist, meadows
as lush as before, before the morning (or was it evening?) that my mind lingers on.
This is the mist of two decades struggling to fall like ash on one who knows.

I can never quite recall what happened that fateful day. The memory of it echoes,
blurred by childhood and retellings. Yet I smile now at a strange phenomenon:
I feel a change in the air today, like a mist. And my heart slows.
This is the mist of two decades struggling to fall like ash on one who knows.

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