Poetry, Jaime Lam
Nothing Serious
He’s the kind of man who just comes in January. Winter on his
shoulders, little clouds hesitating around his aptitude.
There—right there, that’s
when love started.
His reaching to touch
my amethyst, quiet held breath between fingertips before dropped
back to
collar bone, to restaurant, to
conversation, to eye contact.
That’s when I started to love
when I wasn’t supposed to.
His lips came to my forehead and felt
like rainfall, like porch swing, like good morning & good
night.
I kissed him first
date—that Friday after
dinner, beside the library, after
divorce, beside snowfall, after
life-curdling, beside street light, after fuck ups, beside even breath,
after rough landscape of before
I kissed him tall at twenty-three.
I never knew love
could feel like
I got away with something.
First Frost
Demeter wasn’t really that great of a mother. After earth
cracked and captivated her
daughter—did she
even notice? Maybe she
exhaled. She was expected to.
Winter came—
she loved to be
cold—what a resting.
Her child knew affection
to be stony, so captured she felt
familiar. His romance
caged much like mother’s
mothering: kisses sharp, bitter milk, deadening blooms.
Jaime Lam is a biracial, queer, tea fanatic. She graduated from Knox College where she majored in English and Creative Writing. Jaime is from the corn part of Illinois, where she still resides (despite deep efforts to not live in Illinois). As a writer, she leans towards poetry, essays, and the wilder card of urban fantasy. As a person, she has a habit of laughing ridiculously hard at her own jokes, making too big of a deal of someone’s birthday, and wants to personally remind you to drink water. Jaime won the Davenport Creative Nonfiction Prize in 2021. Her work can be found in Viewless Wings, Breakbread Lit, Papers Publishing, Pile Press, Indie Earth Books, The After Past Review, and Sandhills Literary. Find her on IG @rainjmerain.