Redemption

Up the side alley, off an ocean-lined highway

there are half a dozen or so boarded up churches

ripe with salvation or disappointment.

Just passed the pink bakery where Mrs. Mary

boasts the best donuts from here

to the edge of life's expectations.

The school sits in steady anticipation, ready,

students are seen at the new Internet café

tweeting away the afternoon and sipping chai. Iced.

That café took over my mother’s favorite bookstore.

Our bookstore

where she bought me the children's bible

I can't find anymore.

Grey faced people with dull expressions gather every week.

They talk of how few tourists come by

and how the bells sometimes toll,

taxing the people their peace or rather their quiet.

The market is small, but contains all the necessities

for living in this place

where no one leaves, besides those who have left.

The hippies and groupies headed south,

religion headed north, and what they left behind

hasn't changed since.

I can still make out the initials of my parents

etched into the warped floor of the ice cream shop,

this is where my father proposed to my mother.

The third boarded church on the left is where were

married. I haven't seen this place in fifteen years.

I find bits of who I was when I lived here

scorched into the earth it stands on

yet I do not replace them to their original location,

I've been fine without them.

SARAH VANDERMYDEN is a part-time student at ACC, a former co-editor of Progenitor Art and Literary Journal for the 2014 edition, and has been writing poetry for over a decade. Drawing inspiration from family and personal experience, Sarah writes powerful poetry that is relatable and interesting.