1.
As a child I gathered stones.
Black-flecked granite grown
orb-like in a stream under cottonwoods,
their durable stories shoved into the pockets
of my jean shorts or overalls.
When the other kids looked at me sideways,
asked me why I didn’t like wearing dresses,
I could touch the stone
remember the trees,
who never asked me to explain myself,
who understood my silence perfectly.
I felt more like rock
than girl or boy,
more like sand than child,
something shaped slowly over years,
rubbed softly until smooth,
companion of tree roots,
young dragonflies,
the shimmer of fish.
When raised brows said I didn’t fit in
I wanted to stare back solid as the stones.
Eyes winking like flakes
of mica lodged between quartz.
Just as sure of myself
as something millions
of years old, just as
unconfused.
2.
My friend’s four-year-old
looks down at her new dress and says,
“This dress doesn’t have pockets…yet.”
She wants her mother to sew pockets
onto any garment that doesn’t have them
so she can gather stones and feathers,
acorns, tiny bird skeletons, leaves,
things she might find along a forest path.
“Yet” works like that:
a waiting pocket.
Placeholder for the number to be solved.
Orange flags to show the line of an unbuilt roof.
And gathering works like that, too:
looking around for what shines.
How everything I have ever picked up
helped me know myself a little better.
Like the stones I held tight,
not yet knowing how sure
I would someday become.
—
Emilie Lygren is a nonbinary poet and educator whose work is grounded in curiosity and reverence. She’s taught writing in a variety of contexts: classrooms, research stations, graduate programs, parks, libraries, and beyond. Emilie’s first book of poetry, What We Were Born For, won the Blue Light Book award in 2021. Find more of her work and words at emilielygren.com.
