Devolution By Alec Solomita

Do you recall when a password

was the spoken talisman

that let you into a treehouse

looped by dark leaves?

Or permission to slither

Through the narrow mouth 

Of the hump of a snowhouse

Your older sisters built each winter

Or the chance to be offered entrance

To a game of spin the bottle

In the make-out room in

The secret sunless barn out back.

Did you ever forget those passwords?

No, I thought not. Did you gravely

pencil them into a loose sheet of paper 

then another, and just in case, another?

Pirates, soldiers, buccaneers,

Wild, moon-loving romancers

spurred you and all kids

to devise them and hold ’em

as close as a straight flush

so even the bad boys

up the park couldn’t

drag them out of you.

And did you ever harbor

even a whisper of a notion

that in future under siege by

a glut of indecipherable scribbles

on frantic scraps of paper,

staring at a passive screen,

unending passwords would 

join forces to crush your spirit?

Alec Solomita is a writer working in the Boston area. His fiction has appeared in

the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, among other

publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His poetry

has appeared in Poetica, MockingHeart Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, The Lake, The Galway Review, and elsewhere, including several anthologies. His poetry

chapbook “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017. His full-length poetry book,

“Hard To Be a Hero,” was released by Kelsay Books last spring.