Three Places

Another Place 

I was lonely so I took another, but the other 

was lonelier, one of a generation 

taught to pleasure themselves instead, 

left behind by father and husband 

and mother, leaving holes and hills 

for cities and places to start again, 

the sides of the world where they called  

from stones, plains, and trains, 

the sun never setting in their screens, 

and when she finally came she looked 

out into a windowpane of empty 

space and she gathered her dead and 

her country floated into place.

Phuket

Dear ghost, dear monster, 

I am happiest when you are here 

Fixated in my hotel bed, the only thing 

Permanent at this time. It was the second 

Thing I was scared of as a child, 

To ever see a ghost. In my mind it was always a man 

Parted from a woman he loved. 

The first thing I was scared of was to die.

Lore 

As we drive into the country in her electric car, we look into the sky, so dark and starless, and silent. Perhaps to fill the silence she starts speaking about her habit of picking up rocks by the cold, random streams in the woods. 

There are all kinds of granite, she teaches us. With all sorts of names like Volga Blue and Black Pearl. Her nine-year old daughter takes a hammer and she splits the rock, and there’s a field of bright crystals in my mind.

Angelo Lacuesta is a Nonfiction Editor at Panorama