Sometimes, my mother tells me
of a fantasy she has always had—
a farmhouse in the mountains, only
in these mountains, it only snows on Christmas. And,
there is no farm to care for, only a farmhouse.
And peaches, growing row by row
in an orchard she can see
from the orange-painted kitchen.
And the peaches are always fat
and sweet and untouched
by flies or bats or birds.
And around the farmhouse
there are ponderosa trees that perfume the air
with pine and vanilla, and my father
is always almost home, and dinner
is always almost ready,
and there are no holes in the drywall,
or leaks in the pipes, and all the windows
are double-paned, and crystal clear,
and unbroken.
Hayley Bowen (she/her) is a poet, an avid craft beer enthusiast, an amateur painter, and a terrible knitter. Her work has appeared in Scythe Magazine, Sylvia Magazine, Dunes Review, and elsewhere. Although she has spent portions of her life in the Sonoran Desert of Southern California, the Rocky Mountain foothills of Colorado, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, she has decided that “home” is wherever she happens to be at the moment. She currently resides in an attic in Upstate New York where she is an MFA candidate in creative writing poetry at Syracuse University.
Latest posts by Hayley Bowen (see all)
- Winter in New York - 31st January 2022
- Starling Heart - 30th April 2021
- An Orchard of Her Own - 9th September 2020