The Extra Bedroom

Poetry
Written By Zaira Bardos

In re imagined beginnings

I/She runs barefoot,

Asphalt burning her soles

Towards the mountain,

Out of breath hoping to melt

The ice chips tucked within her ribs.

But she’ll look up and find a grave of people

Who used to love her, and I won’t tell her

They’re not dead and it’s true.

She wouldn’t believe me if I said

They are just strangers now.

Boxes of memories, all packed beneath the dirt

She places parts of herself at each station and leaves

A ghost.

I think leaving your childhood feels like

Being carried to your bedroom from the car

Pretending to sleep, a blanket of dark light.

I hope you can hear your sibling’s laughter

From the next room.

Inspiration:

“ I hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child and fell asleep on the couch during a family party. I hope you can hear the laughter from the next room”. By lilies abounded

Memoria (2021) Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Screencap from Filmgrab.com. Photo is from the film Memoria (2021).

Zaira Bardos

Zaira Bardos (she/her) is a twenty-one-year-old Filipina American writer & filmmaker who is pursuing her English MA at Western Washington University. Growing up in a small town in the valley below Mt. Rainier, she found writing was a safe spot for her stories on angry women of color, girlhood, and living in the diaspora. Her upcoming works will be published in Hot Pot Magazine and Wyld Craft Magzine. You can find more of her work at Her Campus Media and watch her films, “I Remember Everything” (2022), “Calum” (2018), and “All The Things We Can’t Say” (2018).

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