Poem In Your Pocket Winner (2021)

                                 Emily and I 

                             by Pamela Porter

                                  __________________________

Together in her drafty attic

we write our letters to the world.

Her lamp sputters, the light poor.

In the frame of her window the sun’s last

spreads over Amherst’s houses.

She let me in when I bragged I was nobody

and now sends me downstairs

to scrounge more paper –

envelopes, she insists – envelopes.

I creep down the creaky stairs.

Try to silence the swinging kitchen door.

Everyone’s out but her pipe-smoking father

who won’t spend a penny on paper.

He doesn’t see my hand lift the wooden box

where he tosses the trash.

I sift out all the envelopes.

Take them up to Emily

and our fevered unfolding begins.

How she cringes when I make the tiniest tear.

This part takes time – the careful unhinging,

the smoothing.

She hands me a pen, an ink pot.

We go to work.

What I’ll remember most

is her shadow on the wall –

her hand, and the pen large, swift,

and her hair — not pulled tight,

but down, free — almost, I would say,

wild.

from Likely Stories (Ronsdale Press, 2019)

Download the poem postcard here