By: Lyall Harris
for Savia
I didn’t know it would be this season
or that I would be standing on the shore
while she wandered into the surf
or that I’d be alone but so full
of the self I was meant to be
or that she would be a young woman
by then
or that we would have learned to see
each other
or that she would begin to trust
what I never knew until now
what it is to be enough
I knew and didn’t know
how we worshiped
the bone of his own cage
and believed it made ours
(to say nothing of tree snake apple)
or that this beautiful unfolding
as limitless as space
as natural as birth
was the very thing we were taught
to fear most
I didn’t know when she resurfaced
that afternoon in July
the light on the water
would glitter like gemstones
Writer-visual artist Lyall Harris’ poetry and prose have appeared in The Minnesota Review, The New Guard, The Raw Art Review, The Dewdrop and elsewhere, and her creative nonfiction has been featured in The Montréal Review. Her poetry has been a finalist in numerous contests and was recently shortlisted for the 2020 Anne Sexton Poetry Prize (Eyewear Publishing) and received First Runner-up for the 2020 Doug Draime Prize for Poetry (RAR). Harris’ paintings have been widely exhibited and recognized with awards, including The George Hitchcock Prize from the National Academy Museum (NYC), and her book art is held in over fifty Special Collection libraries, such as those at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Yale and Stanford. She holds an MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing from Mills College and a BA in Art History from Northwestern University.
"Baptism, dedicated to my daughter, is one of the final poems written for a new collection about hidden abuse and what it takes to break free. (The manuscript’s working title is “Enough.”)
When I broke free of this abuse, I also set my teenaged daughters free of our circumstances. Of course, their path, like their experience of the abuse, is their own. I can offer support, love them unconditionally, and hold the complex truth of our family life, but I cannot heal them.
Baptism reveals the deeply ingrained gender inculcation at work in our Judeo-Christian culture as well as the secular, even more pervasive, message about and drive to compensate for an internal state of 'not enoughness.' Coming into my own wholeness, which also implies self-forgiveness as it relates to my inability to understand the dysfunction of our family system and thus my inability to adequately protect my daughters, ultimately results in, I believe, also a service to my daughters. The poem speaks for itself in terms of bearing witness to my younger daughter’s own journey and rebirth."
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