Tessa Lapalme,“Kitchen Rats,” (2025)

THE LEAF - QUIET

Olga Vilkotskaya

of a countryside upbringing. So romantic!
You could suffocate it with cotton. The youngest
seems to have lost interest in her dolls, preferring
to build dams out of pebbles in the teal river.
Firefly season is coming. Great grandfather will beam
through his glasses like an owl. We have swept
The Pavilion of Timelessness for the guests. 
Elms, sky, moss, flickering koi. It was sadness
everyone felt, at the thought that the camera
had been broken by the stupid neighbor boy.

Olga Vilkotskay is from Belarus and grew up on the West Coast. She is the author of the children's book Becoming Kaxan. Her poems and essays appear in Pacifica Literary Review, The Monarch Review, and Peripheries Journal. She’s a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers. Her more meandering thoughts can be found in her Substack, Late Night Olga.