The Road Beneath Our Feet
Forbes & Wood Streets. Pittsburgh – 1976
The Wrong Place
Her name is Cindy, or Ann, or Carol.
She looks back over her left shoulder,
listening, her ear as perfect as a seashell.
The sleeves of her dress like wings, still
to discover, not yet unfolding.
What she sees we cannot see, a writing
on the wall of her own making, indelible.
In her right fist, tight against her breast,
she holds a pebble, her wishstone, white and
smooth, ready to work magic. And magic she needs.
A moment frozen, she will not remember.
No going back to what she left behind.
At the next snap of fingers, she will turn
her elfish face away from us to find the
street to cross, and simply disappear.
— Sabine Pascarelli
Sabine Pascarelli is an Italian poet from Tuscany, near Florence. She grew up in Germany where she earned a degree in German language and literature at Dortmund University. She is a published poet, an author of children’s literature and a translator of English, German and Italian. Her latest translation is Cosa farei per amore by Grace Cavalieri, and in 2020 her poems appeared in Singing in the Dark, A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown, Penguin Random House, 2020.
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