Las Flores, by Laura Chalar

Las Flores, by Carmelo de Arzadun (Uruguay) by 1968

Las Flores
            
The house that our father loved had a ghost, 
so he sold it. Before that, we had slept in the attic
under a slanting straw roof, heads on the pillow

where the ghost printed its hand. We had gone down
to the shingle beach, tottered knee-deep in water,
pebbles biting our feet. The house was on the other

side of the road, its backyard the greening hills. Early-
morning glow made it almost lift off in the light: an even
tinier version of the one he and our mother had built

a few years before, a recycling of dreams thrown away, 
his second attempt at a holiday home to hold a family 
together – the family now smaller, his efforts again foiled, 

this time not by himself but by a hand impressed 
on a bedspread – the last house he tried to own, 
bring us children to, raise to an idea of summer. 

Laura Chalar

​Laura Chalar was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a lawyer and writer whose most recent poetry collection, Unlearning, was published by Coal City Press in 2018. Her short story collection The Guardian Angel of Lawyers was published by Roundabout Press in 2018.