jessingrassellino

Tag: creative writing

  • The Aisle

    jess ingrassellino, summer 2019

    (for my mother)

    Tomorrow, she will graduate from

    high school. But

    today, she’ll walk down the aisle, her

    white lace wedding dress

    billowing with a baby bump,

    her burden.

    Her father, wearing his crisp navy suit,

    will take her trembling arm.

    He’ll tell her to stop crying, while a tear

    struggles to escape from his own

    red eye. They’ll walk slowly,

    up the aisle,

    to the organ’s song.

    Wearily, she lifts her swollen feet

    over the plush, red carpet.

    Feet stuffed in the white wedge heels her

    mother forced her to wear.

    Tall, dark wooden pillars line the aisle like

    great oaks. She steps into her future, unknown.

    Greeted by the groom in his

    Ruffled white tux, she smiles, but thinks:

    “I should run.”

    It all happens so fast, the

    prayers and vows, rings and wows –

    Through the stained-glass roof, the

    sun beams down on the new bride and groom.

    Kisses are exchanged, and

    the organ starts an energetic Rondeau.

    The bride faces her family –

    old and new – all pink chiffon and

    smart brown suits, with darker brown lapels,

    staring up at her, with tears of

    adoration and agony.

    Together, she and her groom

    march and wave at the family, and

    pews recede as she approaches the

    open chapel door, as if the door to the outside

    might also mean

    escape.

    Bride and groom and baby,

    forever intertwined, each

    parent the plight of their

    unborn child.

  • Night at Beachy Head

    jess ingrassellino, summer 2019

    They hadn’t asked to be there, those

    sharp stones at the bottom of Beachy Head.

    But the stones knew some things about

    humans.

    Gangly humans waited until dusk,

    finding their way to the cliff’s edge

    on the flat grassy path. The

    Wind coaxed humans closer to the edge,

    Where the stones had the best view.

    Looking up, those old stones got hit by

    a phone, tossed over the edge, by a human.

    The human – this time a girl –

    Wailed in pain and screamed goodbye,

    Throwing herself over soon after.

    The stones and cliffs noticed:

    Humans aren’t very good at emotions.

    Terrible at grief and loss. Worse at deciding

    What to do about it.

    The sharp stones and white cliffs were

    Stained red more frequently than one might think –

    Twenty times per year if the numbers added up right.

    More often, though, the stones saw

    Sadness – in a dangling foot,

    or an anxious glance,

    cast in their direction –

    pebbles kicked over the edge into the waves below.

    If the stones could shout back at the girl,

    after she launched her phone,

    but before she’d launched herself,

    maybe they’d tell her that

    nothing had gone better for those who had gone before.

  • Two Poems: Sketches of St. Petersburg

    jess ingrassellino, june 2019

    I read Spouts (1921), an earlier poem by William Carlos Williams. I enjoy his first person, direct, and conversational writing style. This poem, like many of his others that I have read, is a single experience written in fragments, making up just one sentence. There is a lot of economy in the way that Williams expresses experience, and there are new stories to be uncovered with repeated reading of his work. These two poems are my first assignment from my first writing class in June, 2019.

    St. Petersburg (May 15, 2019)

    Monument, 

    Taller than the other buildings – it seems, 

    Taller than everything. 

    Guarding the circle, the 

    Subway, the  

    twin buildings 

    Flanking the road 

    into the city. 

    Her dual histories stand, 

    Signed – Piter and Leningrad –  

    Overlooking the city and 

    Her history.  

    In the taxi, I 

    enter.

    The Serfs (May 16, 2019)

    Today, we saw the 

    Yellow building, 

    Three stories high, where

    Serfs were sold.

    Today, the 

    Red roof and clean

    Archways 

    Frame the view from the 

    Second story windows, where

    Tourists can see the 

    Seven bridges when they look

    Outside from the

    Safety of their rooms at the 

    Holiday Inn Express.

  • The Past Comes Back

    Well. Through a series of unexpected events, a whole chunk of my past came back and hit like a brick today. A piece that I’ve placed neatly away in my mind, like a movie or a dream or a memory. I rarely talk about it, rarely engage with it. Denial stains everything about it.

    The wayback machine brought me to an old blog I’d thought lost, and I encountered raw and real and open writing. Things that I’d probably not talk about now, so openly. This bit struck me:

    “For me, there is a permanent homelessness that follows in my heart wherever I am. When I think of home, residences are not the foremost visions in my mind. The essence of a home – somewhere that you know you belong, somewhere that you fit no matter what happens – this essence is something I seek. Something I have sought. An essence that is altoghether missing from my life. So while he drives and stares, my brother reads and waits, I just wonder if and when I will ever go home again.”

    May 28, 2012

    Nine years later, I’ve found home. I’m relieved for Jess of 2012. She found her way through everything these past 9 years. I used to seek that external home – that place I’d walk in and feel “myself”, or that person who could make it so. The essence of belonging, of being whole.

    Back then, I didn’t feel I belonged in myself, let alone the world. Now, I am the world I need. I expand into the world, I inhabit spaces, learn from them, absorb them, become more at home as I expand my experiences, knowledge, mind, space. I’ll always be at home, because I have found a way to love myself, to forgive myself, to accept myself where and how I am.

    It’s a damn journey, one that still makes me anxious at times. But nine years later, I. AM. home.