“Storytellers” Poetry Contest RUNNER-UP and Pushcart Nominated: It Just Is and Other Poems

by Katie Ellen Bowers

“Storytellers” Poetry Contest Runner-Up and Pushcart Nominated:

IT JUST IS

They say that the universe is expanding.

I find you here in this nameless cellar; subtle

hues of purple around the edges, a fading

bruise of the sun sinking into the Earth,

I understand that you have been running your

hands along the stones walls, over and over and over,

not looking for an escape, not searching

but existing in darkness that goes

far beyond the stretched-out tips of your fingers.

They say that there is no empty space for

the universe to expand into, to expand towards.

It just is.

You've been pushed beneath the surface

and into its depths—water splashing over

the side of a tub—this space, your space,

growing wider, growing darker, growing,

and growing into and onto itself.

They say that to God there is no time.

No Wednesday morning. No Sunday afternoon.

When I find you next, it is in a brightly-lit

sanctuary, the sun outside settling into a winter's

dusk of grey, and we're as alone as we aren't, as you rest

your head upon my shoulder, the beds of your nails

are still ruined and roughed.

They say that when we pray, the prayer goes

beyond the very second of invocation, a space

that is just for yesterday, three weeks ago,

seven months from now, forty-four seconds

past that day before the moment.

THE STORY BEHIND THE POEM:

During two separate guided meditations, I found a version of myself in various spaces, some hidden part of me, my shadow self, perhaps. The first time I was in a dark cellar. For me, spirituality has never been easy; I've never been able to open my arms to it, never been able to hand my soul over to anything with faith and confidence. There was (and still sometimes is) something that I kept guarded, kept hidden away--much like this version of me in the cellar. And, although I kept this part of me guarded, I was still yearning for the solace of spirituality, running my hands over and over along the walls, looking for something within myself and within the confines of my space. 

One afternoon, my husband was telling me about the universe, about how it is expanding, and even though there is nothing to expand into, it just keeps expanding. It was these moments, the cellar image and the conversation with my husband, that led me to realize that I had to stop searching within. These moments gave me clarity to the image of myself I saw in the second guided meditation: me in a brightly lit sanctuary. 

I came to understand that I had to step back, step away from my self-constructed cellar in order to really begin my path toward spirituality, my path toward God. In the poem I note that, while sitting in the sanctuary, the beds of my nails are still rough, still ruined from the time spent running my hands along the cellar walls, which is to say I'm still not I'm not secure, I'm not yet full of faith, I'm not yet healed, I'm not yet willing to plant my feet into the ground and proclaim anything, but I am now standing in the sun with my arms and mind and eyes wide-open. 

BETWEEN BIBLES AND BALLPOINTS

My husband and I pass notes in church,

the velvet-seated pew between us

reminiscent of the space between desks

in a high school classroom.

Our familiar handwriting trying to grasp

our own separate understandings

and misunderstandings of Jesus,

of my mismatched history with

each Psalm and each prayer from

my calloused palms.

Sometimes I ask him about

lunch after church.

Sometimes Rebekah asks me what

a word in her Bible means.

Sometimes I write:

I just don't get it.

But there's something there,

in that sacred space where our hands

meet, between Bibles and ball-point

pens, somewhere our daughter

is proclaiming her love for God

without hesitance or fear or question,

somewhere between my curved hand

and his precise one, she has taken

His hands in her own.

THERE IS MUCH TO BE SAID

There is much to be said about

woman and man, hours spent on

the discourse surrounding gender

of femininity versus masculinity,

how it's all a construct pressed upon

us long before we are taken from

the womb of our mothers, but

God ripped out a rib from Adam, so

that one day he would work and toil

in the fields for her who came from him,

and for the sons and daughters born of her,

and, with the dusk of the day dusting his

skin, my husband digs a hole in

our backyard, chopping away at roots far

beneath the surface of the Earth, shovels

of dirt upon scoops and shovels of dirt,

to bury our daughter's cat, alone and quiet,

as to disturb only the soil.

There is much to be said for the burden

a man carries to keep bits of root and

remnants of soft gray fur from

the hearts of his wife and daughter.

KATIE ELLEN BOWERS

Katie Ellen Bowers is a poet and educator living in the rural Southeast with her husband and daughter. Her work can be found in Qu Literary Magazine, Kakalak, and The Dewdrop, for which she was nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry collection comes out in 2024.