Page 45 - HEF Pen & Ink 2022

I saw my hand--somehow separate from my body--stretching out before me as I reached
for the shabby, black cover and then read the first poem: ‘When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be’ by John Keats. As I let his prose wash over me, my thoughts went quiet and I felt a calmness settle deep in my soul. I read the poem over and over, until its stanzas were imprinted into my memory, returning to her room each day for weeks to obsess over ev-
ery line. It became my constant companion throughout those bleak winter months, quickly worn out from my loving caresses on the thin pages, falling apart by the seams as I turned the pages again, and again, and again. Looking back, I never would have known that
Iridescent By Katya Shkurigin
Moth into the Flame By Quin Vulk
a fourteen line poem would alter my heart so much. Yet that was all it took for me to fall ir- revocably in love with poetry, with its flowing rhythms and beautiful imagery, with its words that never failed to reach that part of my chest that was so very hidden and so very empty. In the solitude of my heart, poetry brought solace. My older siblings were grown and gone and I was alone; I knew that nothing would ever be quite the same again and felt my life--along with my childhood--quickly slipping through my fingers. But then, suddenly, there was someone who understood. There was someone who felt what I felt, someone who described it so perfectly, someone whose heart ached like mine. There was hope.
Something in the Grass By Kylie Stevens
By Kylee Hamper
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