When I saw St. Frida

Frida Kahlo in a box,
The breath before it’s taken,
her small square coffin holding into ashes holding into the crisp seams of the bed,
The box in more repose than her body ever did,
no more wind shaken locks or casts cutting her body into blocks,
just one single moment
of silence.

Port Gibson

A red and white spackled wooden theatre,
stands alone among the people.
They walk by every day, and they worry about food stamps, weather, football, health insurance,
the great mysteries of the universe, and the food desert they’ve found their lives in.
The theatre waits on.

Wait no, that’s not true.

A red and white spackled wooden theatre,
spaced with lights, and rats, and dust, and the general ephemera of life in a semi abandoned
building
struggles to adapt to the times.
It was a drive in,
a protest site,
a place where love grew and wore down.
The theatre will wait on.

Wait no, that’s no longer true.

A red and white spackled wooden theatre,
which in the past served as a drive though movie place and central part of children’s memories
and nightmares,
love’s hopes and dreams and perhaps maybe more than one divorce,
burned down the night I was driving through.
It was at the time an event venue for college life,
and beer laugh joy condoms too loud music flowed through it
just like it did before
even if people didn’t know their ancestors had also used it.
Like a beautiful stranger in the night,
I saw its red and white windows like a woman holding a cross
and then I opened up the newspapers and found out

that stranger was dead.

Wait no, that’ll never be true,
the site of our hopes and wishes live on,
nestled between our tongues and teeth,
a red and white living reminder
of the places our DNA belongs.

Alexandra Melnick is an educator and writer living in the Mississippi Delta. An alumna of Millsaps College and University of Mississippi, her work has been published by the likes of Teaching Tolerance, Bitterzoet, Geez Magazine, Rewire, and The Dead Mule School. A dedicated no-good do-gooder, Alexandra is dedicated to building a better Mississippi and thus a better world for her community.