Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Fantasy with Night Sky & Sailor Knot

Even now I think imagine when I mean
remember—summer dark, decades ago, 

the two of us alone together. Skywatching
side by side, contact part shadow, part struck 

match. You said satellites, not stars & I couldn’t tell
if you were speaking to me in facts or metaphors. 

What wouldn’t I have done, if you had asked,
those midnights thick with vertigo? Still true— 

time lapse any photograph & the light trails.
What if a tide, even years later. In dreams 

I draw your sea-flecked eyes & sailor knot
my body down. I’d know your hands anywhere.

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Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is the author of Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press)— a 2025 National Indie Excellence Award finalist, 2025 Eric Hoffer Award honorable mention and 2025 First Horizon Award finalist. In 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation for her poetry. Violeta’s work has appeared in Sugar House Review, The Dodge, RHINO, SWWIM, Psaltery & Lyre and elsewhere. Violeta lives with her family on a small certified wildlife habitat in suburban western Pennsylvania.