ALL THINGS

bring back the days before grief was linked
to love. The triangular stone with blue veins of lapis lazuli 
found in the Rockies. The wooden snake rising out of its deep blue 
vase. Brother’s chocolate coffee beans. Hands with their strong, 
shapely fingers. The past is this: a shiver at his touch, a house 
renovated for two nomads, two walls of masks and the brass
rubbing of a Mayan god. The present tense: His not saying 
each morning, over coffee, “You’re so pretty,” except 
me to myself. An important reminder to see  
myself. Outside the window of my hotel room is a secret
walled garden, home to three pear trees. Two have shed their leaves
with the season, but the one closest to me hangs onto 
its yellows and oranges, reaches out as the rain gently dampens 
and I work to preserve love in the form of this swollen sonnet.

Sandi Stromberg is the author of two poetry collections, Moonlight, Shaken (2026) and Frogs Don’t Sing Red (2023). Her poems have appeared in many small journals and anthologies, among them San Pedro River Review, Gyroscope Review, MockingHeart Review, and The Senior Class. An editor at The Ekphrastic Review, she also edited two anthologies of poetry—Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston and Echoes of the Cordillera. A four-time Pushcart and two-time Best of the Net nominee, she was a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times. Dutch translations of her poems have appeared in Brabant Cultureel.