On Your Passing Journey
By: Loukia Borrell
Silk Road Review
Spring 2026
You visited me on your passing
journey, to the stone marker and
dirt you will share with your
mother and father, not your wife.
You did not feel she was good to you.
You pass by to tell me that for the rest
of my life, I will yearn for my younger self,
and recall those stiletto years, tight jeans
and answering my front door nude.
These secret distractions, this
whoring restlessness and hunger
for men I don’t admire will disable me.
You warn me: I will sleep on sidewalks and
in untended gardens filled with vermin.
At that time, you will return to
find me as barren as the fig tree in winter,
brittle arms ascending and it will be then,
knowing my thirst, that you will
water me and call me, daughter.
