Ophelia

Clairette Lemieux

Climbing up the tree, trying to reach heaven,

The bark scrapes my knees and my palms.

My lips, they’re so dry

Muscles burning,

Foothold

After

Foothold,

I climb out on the rough bough of the tree,

The limbs that will always carry me.

The birds fly away,

My hair is snagged and pulled, leaves in the waves.

Leaves in the ripples of the pond below me,

The sky is so blue.

It hasn’t looked like that to me in ages.

If I could stop,

I would reach up and grab the clouds but

The ache in my legs

Needs to match

The ache in my lungs,

My lungs,

My heart

And my brain.

I can’t reach into the clouds anymore,

My arms are so sore.

But the water below is full of flower petals

And my arms

Drop,

Reaching downwards because that is something I can do,

My chest pressing into the rough wood.

Flower petals.

Didn’t I have flowers in my pockets?

Woven through my hair, did they leave me too?

Everything is replaced by leaves.

A man would dust off his khakis,

Sit next to the stream and lean

Short hair back against the bark.

I hang in the sky, cradled by the branches,

Long hair falling down like willow leaves.

A man would have been allowed to love you,

To grab your hands and kiss you into your senses.

I am not a man.

The stars hurt my eyes if I look up too quickly,

I’m far too far away so instead I reach out with both hands,

the tree groans a goodbye,

A bough about to snap, I snap at that which tries to hold me.

I barely push myself up,

Up,

Down,

What does it matter?

I flip in the air and maybe I’m rising.

Maybe the stars are taking me home after all.

The clouds feel awfully like

A freezing pond filled with petals

I had maybe picked a mind’s edge before.

My dress is so light, maybe it’s alright to just keep rising.

Dragged by the hair and skirt into heaven.

You reach up and grab me,

I fall, I crash,

Into you.

You are the heaven I already have.

My name is Clairette Lemieux and I am a second year student at UW. I am double majoring in English and Environmental studies, and some of my work has been published through the Cathartic Lit Magazine. I love writing about the interactions between nature and humans, and the way that humans love each other. “Ophelia” is kind of a response to a poem I wrote when I was sixteen about my depression, being in the closet in a religious household, and the feeling of always reaching for something I felt I couldn't have. I titled that poem “Hamlet” after the main character of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In “Ophelia” I wanted to talk about that feeling of yearning that is still a part of me, and the things that I am still so afraid of, but also the way that I have found peace, and how I've found my 'heaven' in my community, and how I cannot and will not give that up now I have it. In one word I'd say it's about desperation.