pronounce it—to
let go of the handle and walk away.
Perhaps you would forget.
Perhaps you would carry that weight
forever, like you carry your great-great-granddaughter,
like you carry the letters cut from your name.
Silent. Heavy.
The city was different then.
And it is the same.
I was passing through.
But now, I let go
of the handle of my suitcase.
I open the trunk and unpack,
allowing myself to say the word—
Permanence.
Or something like it.
I look at the city
from this island, like they did.
My face is my own.
The letters spell a name wholly different
from the one in the book,
the one etched on the wall.
I trace the letters with my finger.
I say them aloud.
I have been here before.
LILA COOPER
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Junior
HIGH SCHOOL: Institute for Collaborative Education
BORN: Brooklyn, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Girls Write Now has helped me grow as a writer. It’s taken me out of my comfort zone of plotless short stories and poetry. Even though I do a lot of poetry, I have learned there are other genres that I actually enjoy. I’ve appreciated Robin’s critiques, because she makes me think in a different way about my writing. She helps me see what’s working and what isn’t; she gets it. Sometimes we both obsess over a single word. It’s great to be able to do that together on Saturdays over a cup of tea.
ROBIN WILLIG
YEARS AS MENTOR: 3
OCCUPATION: Chief of Staff, Center for Reproductive Rights
BORN: Far Rockaway, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Summer Residency, Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: I never studied poetic forms and I was struck, in the Girls Write Now session, by the many rules. Lila and I talked a lot about “Garland Cinquain.” Wasn’t he an informant on an SVU episode? She and I share a love of words and often our time is spent dissecting and rebuilding. At the end of the Poetic Forms workshop, the girls read their pieces aloud and each chose to ignore the rules. I appreciate that about the mentees, and Lila especially—their willingness to explore. Generation F indeed: freedom, flouters of rules, and, likely, founders of a better way forward.
This poem is a recollection of the time I spent in India as a child.
God slipped in between the gauzy white sheets last night
she pulled at the bottom of my slip separating me from the warm sun that enveloped my barely there body
Begging for my attention
she was dressed in red like fire and roses and watermelon in July
Like the man who took a bite out of a pomegranate like it was an apple
she wore marigolds around her neck like I did when I was five
Like my mother did on the day she got married
she wore the ones in the Kainchi garden where I sat and tasted the sweetness of mangoes for the first time with my best friend
Where we chased each other into the terra-cotta pagoda hearing the faint chants of kirtan wallahs and cow bells
In monsoon season we would venture down the unpaved road in our bright pink rainboots to get toast from the Tawaris
piled up to my head and wrapped in crinkled tinfoil
She was blue like the dye from my skirt that would run into the river
She had warm hands like the milk she gave me in her garden, my hands have always been cold
I am in a house without her while it’s snowing outside and all I have is a child’s blanket to keep me warm
I miss you
I hope you’re doing ok
I can’t wait to see you again
Talk soon,
Lila
Her hair was always white like the temple walls
The ones I was a devi under
The ones I ate halwa and basin ladus out of a banana-leaf bowl under
She always reminded me of the trees during monsoon season, so big and full of life, the kind of life I didn’t see in New York
that’s probably what I remember the most about India how comic book green all the trees were and when we were driving around a bend and I looked down all I could see were those Technicolor trees for miles and miles
Sometimes I wonder when I’ll go back and how it will feel now that she’s no longer there
