Two Poems by grace (ge) gilbert

grace (ge) gilbert

POETRY

The studio was a place of birth

The studio was a place of birth. 

Shedding my old pain, becoming long 

and lean like a toad on its hind legs. 

But I had to leave it behind, and the 

Boston fern, which is not really from 

Boston, it’s from my friend who is 

always moving to LA. Little fronds 

sticking straight up like a new tongue, 

the same way my mother used to spike 

our hair in the bathtub. Our home life 

then was very Catholic. My sister 

would have her nightmares. Once we 

were jumping up and down on the 

carpet, and the floor lurched into a 

mouth and swallowed us completely. 

Once her hair slid off her head, grew 

into the shape of a man who tried to 

chase her. In the living room was a 

real blue rocking horse that had big 

eyes, where my father once tickled me. 

I kept screaming for him to stop but 

he kept doing it, and when my mother 

came home I had thrown up on the 

carpet. I remember that she was angry, 

that I was a devil that year for 

Halloween. My sister and I shared a 

hot bedroom, where we could hear 

each other breathing. And sometimes 

in our new home I will hear it from 

my own sleep. The sound of our 

minds trying to parse out what was 

real. 

||

Everyone, as of right now, is okay

Everyone, as of right now, is okay. Marg sent us a postcard 

of a bald eagle, and last night we spoke to her and K, about 

our engagement and bears and mental illness. Sometimes 

we predict one another’s shortcomings and then we are 

right. I know if I put up the pom pom curtains Honey will 

eat them and thus we live without. I don’t know what I am 

recovering a sense of. I know a good chunk of change 

would do me some good. I once sat in the library of Riley 

elementary, where one day I walked out and never returned. 

My teacher pointed to the windows, blinds drawn but 

slightly open, said the snow falling through them reminded 

her of an old film, and this was my first divine noticing. 

Upset at my mother for disappearing, I used to imagine her 

face in the same sky and it would break my heart. I was 

with her when the ambulance came, but of course I don’t 

remember this. We were playing catch in the yard. I don’t 

know if anyone I love, whom I know fully, is a good 

person. I miss people even when it’s stupid to. When I went

to camp I wrote my mother every day, and my heart would

sink when I didn’t get any mail back. I don’t know if they

even send those letters. All flaws are children. She was right

down the street.

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grace (ge) gilbert (they/them) is the author of Holly (YesYes Books 2025).

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