Untitled #1

Come, let’s spin a yarn
of tensions squirreled away in spines:
a tale of knots the body forms
around all sorts of swallowed hurts -
galls to keep the bitterness
far from our tender hearts -
of lessons learned and soon forgot,
memorialized by sateen scars.
Let’s legendize what brought us here,
so marvelously made and marred,
and held
and held
and held
within each other’s arms

Untitled #2

We will plan a garden
though the seasons are unmoored
We will plant trees to marry
shifting earth to wayward sky
We, too, will change,
and count the change as good
and death as another step towards glory -
and by gathering changeling seeds
we will take root in what will be

Alyssa Stewart believes that fiction is an invaluable source of truth. She is grateful for the storytellers who raised (and are still raising) her, played with her, worked with her, and live with her still. Alyssa is the winner of the inaugural Combahee River Prize for a SC Writer of Color presented by the Jasper Project, published in Fall Lines – a literary convergence, Volume X, and funded by the SC Academy of Authors.