The man at the open market comes around 
his fruit stand, shaking his head. He scowls 
at the apple in her hand, asks in a foreign 
tongue how many she needs. When she replies 
in his language he quickly fills her string bag. 
Maybe choosing one’s fruit is considered 
an offense in this place where she is a stranger. 
Perhaps if she buys a few pears along 
with the apples he will see she means well. 
She wants to belong to this village without 
any billboards. Where she hears bells ring 
at dawn, and walks about in a daze—
trying to inhabit the silence of old, stone 
walls and cobbled lanes. Now, she can 
scarcely keep from singing upon seeing 
a basket of pomegranates fattened 
in the Mediterranean sun. 

Laura Ann Reed,

a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, taught modern dance and ballet at the University of California, Berkeley before working as a leadership development trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Her writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Britain, for example: Loch Raven, MacQueen’s Quinterly, One Art, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, The Grey Sparrow, and Willawaw, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Shadows Thrown (Sungold Editions, 2023). Laura and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.

Author’s website: https://www.lauraannreedpoet.com/