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Nothing Serious & First Frost

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.


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