‘when in the moors’, ‘pandora’, ‘saint francis de sales’, ‘hope & a cup of tea’ & ‘the stream of light’

H. M. Heffernan is a 26 year old writer from the Rust Belt city of Akron, Ohio. Heffernan moved to Durango, Colorado for college and took advantage of its access to the desert and the West. Here she cultivated her craft and developed her distinct voice, absorbed in ideas such as the myth of The American Dream, the idea of the West, the abandonment of the Midwest, Modernity, Absurdism, youth and age, the duality and beauty, tragedy, comedy of and in all things, and Vegas baby.

when in the moors 

was it our hair intertwined, entangled together into a sepulcher 

for tenderness that uprooted my understanding of what is solitary? 

was it your cheek pressed tightly against my womb 

that christened, purified the quintessence of what it is to care for myself? would the imparting of my soul into the roots of the chestnut tree 

make it so I may finally not be too little? would the imparting of my soul into the roots of your own blossom my longing to pass through life by your side into what is moral? what is true? what is good? 

I ask these questions to bestow my heart into your hands without having to look at you. 

I cry with the loneliness of a little girl lost while lamenting 

the beldam plea to simply be left alone. how could I ask you to care for me when this heart beats like the graying newborn bud of a rose? 

o wild bird. 

if you would not watch as my petals fragment at the reaching of your own, I pray you do not reach for them at all.

pandora 

she / the all-gifted / becomes in the palm of cruelty’s hand / mistaking him for tenderness / longing to kiss every morsel of goodness offered from his fingertips / daughter looks to father with the stalwart stone of unconditional love / of gluttony / father looks to daughter with the divine hunger of a poacher / a thief / the first fruit cannot be pardoned for it is foreordained to be devoured / she / the ill-fated / the fore-wilting flower / her longing to be everything for him met with shame / a kiss on her unclothed shoulder / a fist pulling at her hair / the ghost of her father’s croon / you must bear the knife to your throat that comes with trying to be good / you must welcome the curse of your roots of your wilt / you must take what I say you deserve / the ghost of her own croon / power as tall as the first fire rests within your hands / and hope as old as the first tree within mine / foretold father torrid and strong / how could they remember you when you offer them no death to emerge anew from? / forsaken daughter her hands stained with his want & his weakness & blood that tastes like the first fire / she carries this cross of dread for you & your father / she calls upon this deliverance of old / a swallow swallowing the sun / to scream hope into the gullets of her children / the soft wrist of a girl lost being held by the first the omnipresent the primordial girl lost / she waits to be donned with the crown of white lilies / to be called rotten and ruined and redeemed from doing it all over again / in her hand is the crown of white lilies / the deliverance of swallowing / the saccharine embrace of the molder the death the / death the sough within the death / to spoil / this is hope that festers in the arms of the daughter of the girl

saint francis de sales 

I am afraid you will let me kiss you only after you have passed away and all that I have left of you is in corner of my room 

I will hold your poor face and trace the scar 

above your right eyebrow because now 

love for you is made yielding my hair does not make tourniquets around your ribs and now I am the one eating I finally understand what you meant when you said to me the tenderness is made bearable for you only when the flesh is rotting so I will try again in another one of our lifetimes 

until you understand that I long for you as you are 

but I know pity has a holy place in love 

and you will always try to make yourself softer 

for me to hold

hope & a cup of tea 

the unknown here festers when / the sun leaves me for the evening / I cannot look at my reflection / there is no sunlight to turn my gray hair / so uneven / so ill-matched / with a face that has not aged with love / into the color of a spritely little rabbit / worthy of an eternal spring / I am heavy in the dark / I am a burden in the dark / I am a girl in the dark and I can feel god / pull at my sleeve to expose the supple healing skin / of my wrist to him / oh my heart I can hear you / crying your laments of a little bird / whose wound is made worse by / struggling in the jaws of fate / you are in the dark / I am in the dark / make haste my dear into / my hand where I will sing to you / where you will unfurl into my song / see the way the flower wilts when / hope becomes too heavy for its petals to bear / I think we are capable of saving each other / just let me hold you soft in my hand and / shield this wellspring from you when your goodness / needs a moment to be / and I watch you take a bite out / of my fear / and it bleeds like a living thing / a loving thing / it becomes a part of you that you keep safe / in your belly / and you say to me / even our fear can be made into light / when we are holding it together

the stream of light 

on this softest summer morning, 

I wrap myself in my shawl of lace that I washed in The Stream of Light the evening before. 

when the dawn sun holds me just right, 

I can feel the fish of The Stream rushing to and fro with a to-do list and the blades of grass bending closer closer closer to the torrent, 

longing to be dreamed away. 

I can hear the first stream that sung a lullaby 

to The Dying Lady as she rushed 

forward forward forward 

for love. I can see the mercy that is the durmast oak offering the drenched bee shelter from the hope she is not quite ready for. 

I can feel the ache of Orpheus as he looked 

back back back 

for love. I too love this softest summer morning far too much not to look back for her, making sure she is following me only to find her lost in The Stream of Light. 

she waits for me there.

Haley Nichole Green is a 22-year-old Appalachian-born poetess and aspiring farmgirl who currently resides in the rural Midwest. Alongside writing and reading poetry, she enjoys sewing and tending to farm animals. Instagram: @softproserpina