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Apparitions
I have sipped the dusk's imprecise honey -
a breathless intoxication, conversing
with ghosts in a darkness more vital
than loss or longing.
Language is no longer fundamental,
caressing the space where your absence
is most absolute. Here, the blood of love
is slick between my fingers and smells
of lilies.
Drunk, drunk on feigned madness
And honest forgetting, I am lost
in this place where your lips' surrender
engulfs me. The faint melody of moonlight
Is treacherous.
The flesh of your belly, smooth and pale
as it expands with the stars' breath,
is the blank tablet to which men and
women have committed words
of prayer and poetry and confused absolution
since thought came to be valued
above silence.
Jessie Housty
Jessie Housty is a 17-year old First Nations writer currently studying
English at the University of Victoria. An avid student of all aspects of her Heiltsuk ancestry and culture, she finds solace and inspiration in the remnants of her tribe’s past. Of similar interest is the history of other peoples, especially as expressed through literature and music. A passion for language and expression has led Jessie to write; however, it is a desire to share and learn that has led her to design and create a website of her written endeavors. She is the recent and surprised
occupant of a first prize position in the Shuswap Lake International Writers’
Festival for her age range, and will also be published in the upcoming anthology “Sky Woman Falls into the Millennium,” of Toronto-based organization
