Two Poems: Excerpts from a Burned Letter

JANE TO HELEN, 2000

At a certain point in childhood, both of us,
with our uneven haircuts, realize that to earn

love we must learn to be Real Girls. So we study
Cosmo and Teen Vogue, wiggle mascara wands

to prevent clumping, and trade colourful
Northern Getaway sweatpants for low-rise

jeans and overpriced American Eagle. Still,
we can’t stuff down our aching

strangeness. The changeling myth is thought,
by some, to have been inspired by autistic

children. Such happy babies we were,
said our mothers, until one day a faraway look

invaded our eyes, and we were no longer easy.
Our struggle contained, little sparks

from our bright filaments. We didn’t know
that the fairies brought us to our real selves

and that “girl” was a mask
we would learn to wear well.

MARIANNE

Her brother’s wife died in the winter of 1960,
seven children left behind and the northern ground
too frozen to dig a grave. She might have driven
her El Camino south to California, where her army
buddies kept ferocious acres; instead, she arrived
with her leather Samsonite on the doorstep of 1014
Second Street, its two small bedrooms.

The third eldest—my mother, not quite ten—
was curled into a paperback. Marianne told her
that if she had nothing to do, the baseboards
could always be dusted. Girls pulled frozen
laundry from the line, numbed their grieving
hands; stiff jeans and jackets stood melting
in the kitchen, like people trying to exist.

Marianne bought a cabin on Northwest Bay,
baby toads on the beach at sunset, children’s
feet coated in cold sand. Boys chopped wood
and whistled duck sounds through grass,
her Quiet down lost on the wind. At midnight,
she’d wake to feed the woodstove, adjust
a stray blanket. Her distant warmth.

She might have dreamed: crosswords in bed,
tomatoes on toast. A beloved illuminated
by grocery store carnations. My own closeted
desires; I offer them now, posthumous
gifts. Tell myself a story about her, alone
with the juniper. Eyes closed, sun clattering red
shapes of pleasure inside her pink lids.

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Joelle Barron is an award-winning poet and writer living in Fort Frances, ON. Their first poetry collection, Ritual Lights (icehouse poetry, 2018), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Barron’s poetry has appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine, CV2, EVENT Magazine, The New Quarterly, and many other Canadian literary publications.

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