Overpass by Alison Hicks

Two days after
my mother died
I lay on the mat
in the storefront studio
down the street from the tracks.

My mother appeared
at the top of the overpass.
I waited for her
to come closer,
but she stopped,
as if this was as far
as she was allowed to go.

She gave me the look
I’d seen many times before
when she needed to leave.

I started crying
as silently as I could.
I didn’t want anyone
to know, or ask questions.

Down the steps,
crickets balanced
on the basement walls.

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about the author:

Alison Hicks is the author of Kiss, a full-length collection of poems, a chapbook Falling Dreams, and a novella, Love: A Story of Images. Her new collection of poems, You Who Took the Boat Out, is forthcoming in 2017. Her work has appeared in Crack the Spine, Eclipse, Fifth Wednesday, Gargoyle, Louisville Review, Passager, Permafrost, and Whiskey Island, among other journals, and is forthcoming in Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Blood Orange Review. Awards include the 2011 Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.