wildscape. literary journal

A Letter to the ‘Just Wait’ Brigade
by Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt

In the summer, I grew leaves and blossomed.
August heat brought me, sun-stained and changing,
into my body again and again.

Just wait
until she’s here,
you’ll never sleep again.

You think that now, but
just you wait

until she’s moving
until she’s screaming
until you lose yourself
to this.

Three days without a shower
do you really think
you’re going to read a book next year?

Glowing, they said, hormones, they said, nesting.
So many words that mean you are not your own.
Just wait, they said,
but I won’t.

Wings and roots born the same day
This sweet softening broadened my hips
to carry new weight by ground,
stronger feathers for air.

Why wait?
If we fall to the water
I’ll teach our daughter to swim.
It was never a matter of ending where she begins.
They wanted me to be a tree but I am the bird who sleeps in its arms.

Just wait, they said,
but I won’t.

Daughter to Mother
by Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt

Mother, I’ve found worlds in my own body.

Do you remember when we knocked on trees to speak to faeries?
Mycelium beneath us speaking
the language of everything.
Redwoods and I, growing together.

Mother, it was easy, then, to love you.
Youth is bright with truths that fade.

When hills sprang from flat earth
on the first day of all days,
rivers ran down them and I was one of them,
pooling in the valley,
and the banks of the pool grew wild and green
and even then, my daughter was growing toward the sun.
I have been so many stories in so many lifetimes,
created and creating, in the same day.

All days are happening on top of each other;
Time is a book of pages stacked neatly
and we are Becoming in every day
and lifetime, something new.

What strange mischief, Mother,
that I spent my childhood
looking for doors to other worlds,
not knowing I am one.

about the author // Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt