by Natalie Marino

I am standing in the corner of a clean
museum where there is a replica
of UCLA’s Powell Library.
With my eye on the highest
window I watch myself happy
sitting in a chair in the film room
watching The Marriage of Maria Braun
and I become a heroine too,
building a life of resilience in the rubble
and reconstruction. I am on a train going
somewhere, dazzling former soldiers
while dancing in a thin slip dress
and pink lipstick. I see myself
young and cunning because the war
is over and I can go wherever I want.
I walk away before the end
of the movie. Whether or not
you stay, the past keeps running up
against the present.

Natalie Marino is a poet and practicing physician. Her work appears in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, wildness and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbooks Under Memories of Stars (Finishing Line Press, 2023) and End of Revels (Bottlecap Press, 2025). She lives in California. You can find her online at nataliemarino.com or on Instagram @natalie_marino.