Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Desert Nights, Rising Stars creative writing conference at Arizona State University. The environment invigorated the same giddy excitement I experienced as a seven-year-old tucked into her closet, creating. The three day writing conference reminded me of what I have always loved to do and reconnected me to a spark I believed had gone out, as I've wrestled through grief and theology in the [almost year's] time since I lost my [former] partner to a drunk driver.
Here, I'll share two poems which came out of an incredible time spent writing and connecting in the desert:
The Impossible
“I am learning how to let go of the physical presence of the one I most loved and invite in this new, close love. It is impossible, and yet, I am doing it. Actively, now, in each moment. Still searching for B in cigarette butts, they are everywhere—look up, to the future, to joy, my mother says—oh look, what is that, up there—for she can’t bear to see me in pain. My father, though, can hold the weight of the grief with me; he is familiar with its heaviness, the questions which arise from my too big eyes, which see everything, all the things, even the ones they never wanted me to see. I am learning to do the impossible, yes, for as Anne Lamott said, “It is impossible, here.”
Someday, I’ll Love You, Heather Dawn
Little brown skinned girl, frowned up
reclining in a rainbow lawn chair,
age three,
grasping in her hands Snow Bride by Margery Hilton.
Who still carries that frown throughout her life, perhaps because
all of the “Wedding Stories” on TLC took so long to come true;
And when one
Finally
Did
That wonderful love transpired into a rainbow.
Like the lawn chair.
Someday, I’ll Love You, Heather Dawn
Warrior girl of questions and degrees,
Buried in books all her life and now
Screaming
Releasing
All the words to the world outside.
Unbridled by fear or sadness,
Sorrow or grave,
She sees things now in rainbow frame.
Snow Bride will not be hindered by city nor place
Her little mind traverses galaxies.
Her feet straddle veils.
They have always straddled the veil.
This is why she frowns, from 3 to 37,
because the light and pain are so palpable
They are fire in her eyes.
Someday, I’ll Love You, Snow Bride.
Amazing, what can come from three days spent writing under desert skies.
Copyright Heather Casimere 2023
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