Carly Jo Helm
Carly Jo Helm is a Virginia-based poet and nonfiction writer from Dallas, Texas. Their writing explores the intersections of the female experience, trauma, and queerness. In 2019, they
published a collection of poetry about growing up queer and quiet in Texas, 'Lady stoneface'.​
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BRADFORD PEAR​
Suddenly it’s a new decade and I find myself spending a Friday night at my parents’ house, where my mother, somehow perpetually aware of my unease, gives me a garden tour of everything she’s grown since I’ve left and I’m drawn to the honest stump of my old tree that had been split by the high winds of Texas thunderstorms more than once; I step onto the swirls of its flat surface right foot first, babying my injured left hip that I never did get around to getting checked out, remember the hours I spent sat on the longest branch scribbling notes of my five-year-old musings into pink and blue polka-dotted diaries while Vanessa Carlton croons into my earbuds that she’d walk a thousand miles just to see you, recall the sinking feeling in my little chest when I woke up after sleeping through a great big storm to look out my dusty window and see the good third of my tree splintered in a million directions—I count the rings to see how long it’s been.
WHERE I LIKE TO THINK YOU ARE
I see her in the sunshine.
She wakes me up and her hand is there
Outstretched to me with the warmth she radiates
In contrast to my broken heart
I take it. Of course I do.
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Her resting place is a patch of grass
On top of the burning star
That we race around endlessly.
The million degrees of fire and heat can’t touch her
They wouldn’t dare.
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She visits me in dreams
In the place my mind returns to so often
I see her on the swing furthest north
And her ghost remains.
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She comforts me when I unintentionally hurt a friend
She laughs with me until we cry in the back of a crowded room
She’s never anything but kind.
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I cross paths with her occasionally
And she stands there beaming
Happy to see me and happy to be.
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She leads me to her little garden on the sun
And flowers bloom where her feet grace the ground
Strands of her hair are woven into careful braids
Cascading down her back in the blinding light
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We sit and talk of summertime and loneliness
And everything she’ll never get to do.
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She apologizes for leaving and I suppose it’s okay
A chance to walk in the stars
And bring life to desolate flames
Is a destiny that only she could deserve.
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I watch the sun disappear into the earth as she did
And reach out.
Note: This poem has been previously published in Carly's book 'Lady Stoneface' as well as Marigold Literary.