Alcatraz Island

When my kids were babies

and I was still married to their mother

we stopped in San Francisco

on the way to a wedding

and took a boat tour of Alcatraz

The memory is stark and singular

Like the island;

it's there when

I’m driving, or

walking in the woods, or can’t sleep

and I list out the worthwhile moments

the rest of my life has been strung between

It was the unexpected quiet

and the fact of rare plants

It was the loneliness

It was the bay like a sea

and the bridge in the distance

winding through earthbound clouds

It was my babies and the picture I took

of my toddler crying in a cage

I have a good marriage now, the best one;

my family is different

But there’s nothing wrong with

leaving that family there

to visit when I want to,

to stand and breathe again

at the edge

as I did

letting the wind whistle through

the vacant windows of my

empty head

Eric C. Hayward is a professional health care writer and designer. His poem "Apocalypse dreams day two" was featured in the May 2021 issue of Global Poemic: Kindred Voices on the Era of Covid-19. As of May, Eric is a freshly minted Diplomate of Acupuncture. Originally from Long Island, NY, he now writes fiction and poetry from his adopted home in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where he lives with his wife, teenage children, and a normally out-of-state college student, all of them writing, working, and studying from home.