Greetings to Lyssa on At Home

Jessica Hayles

May 06, 2020 4:15 PM

Greetings to Lyssa by Jessica Hayles

It had been so long since Jessica had used her laptop that she briefly thought the time it spent booting up meant it was broken. It was a relief, after all that, to find that her fingers still more or less remembered what to do on a keyboard.

Dear Lyssa, she typed carefully,

Jessica Hayles here. I've been looking up some stuff, like we talked about at the Ball, and I think you might be on to something, especially with the speech side of things - that would allow more people to make a case without one of us having to write a speech about the racist position or whatever, if none of them show up or have the guts to try. Maybe there could be a question-and-answer session as part of the contest, like they do in universities? I'll copy in a link.

You asked about my work, so I'll also link a document with some of that. I hope you enjoy it.

Hope you're having a good summer!

Jessica

Jessica had always been accustomed to people reading her poetry, but it turned out it was very slightly different, giving it to people who she didn't know very well, and much different, sending something to someone she knew was also a writer. Picking out a few poems had taken a long time, and she was still nervous even as she changed permissions on the document she'd typed some into so anyone with the link could view:

J.R. Hayles

Poems

Tulips

Bright waxes petals rise upward like a hymn.
but the weight of their own glory draws them down -
Bright waxen petals bend and break the stem
Which gives life and supports the crown

The tulips smell like honey
To eyes and noses both they’re sweet
But they must pass away as swiftly
As all the sweetest things we meet.

Three Haiku, Before A Thunderstorm

A sliver of sun -
Salt-sharp sky drops slash the Earth
Clouds gather quickly

Grim mountain ranges up above
The air is thick and hot now
Each breath comes slowly

Glancing showers
Fresh drops drip onto old stones
Memento mori

Old Granddaddy Longlegs

Old granddaddy longlegs,
Frail as a dream,
Sits motionless on the patio –
His legs thin and sparse as Granddaddy’s hair,
His body a mole from Granddaddy’s face.

Poor old fellow; he huddles against a table leg,
Sitting still, clinging to the weathered slab,
His only shield from the cold.

He hid beneath the slides before, but was startled –
A little girl knelt, sharp-eyed, to study him
While all of life opened up before her

An old man does not feel her wonder.
Once, maybe, life's river spread as wide before him,
But now it has become narrow -
As narrow as the jaws of old granddaddy longlegs,
Who, they say, is full of poison – but cannot bite.

Untitled

The rain descends -
clear drops falling,
washing away grass clippings,
mud stains, and twigs –

The rain descends -
clear drops falling,
Invisible acids defacing stone,
burning grass, and poisoning rivers –

The rain descends,
turns over black earth,
and brings up new life:
earthworms and roses –

The rain descends
Turns over black earth,
and mats the earth-colored fur
of the cat creeping by the roses -

Hard, heavy rain washes the streets
and fills the gutters with refuse,
which, someday, another rain will reach
and force the earth to vomit forth again.

A Spring Evening At Home

Shrill sounds from the specks of brown
flittering far from the old oak tree.
They dart and peck all around,
standing out against the green.

The breeze that blows is a spring breeze:
cool and damp, soft on the skin.
The petunias dance among their leaves
and send out fragrance from within.

Within this porch I cannot smell
The rose’s breath pooling beside the stair
I see, though, where a dozen petals fell
To dot the dark earth where it is bare.

Another bit will remain bare
Where a cedar tree once grew
The breeze softly twists my hair
As I wait for the falling dew.

OOC: And as for Jessica's link...here goes nothing, fingers crossed I close all my tags right, and that you can view it here

16 Jessica Hayles Greetings to Lyssa 1442 1 5

Lyssa Fitzgerald

May 07, 2020 3:16 PM

Wait... me? I mean, hello! by Lyssa Fitzgerald

The cats looked out at her from the poster as she walked through the front doors. The hot air sealed behind her as she was entombed in the cool dark interior of the library. Lyssa breathed deeply. Unlike Parker who thrived outside during this time of year, Lyssa was more like a spring flower. Enjoying the weather in the early morning and after the sun had begun to set behind the Sierras, but the day time was brutal and she'd wilt.

Lyssa took a deep breath, smelling the sweetness of books and walked straight to the computer bank. She smiled at the librarian sitting in the reference section with her feet up on the table. She got out her note book and the two debate books she’d checked out earlier that week. Lyssa had a computer at her house, but it was nice to be in a library. She felt comfortable here, like at school. Plus, she could get books that her parents might not have. Especially on the topics she was reading.

Before getting down to business, she decided to check her email and was briefly nervous. An email from Jessica Hayles as at the top. She turned around, making sure no one was reading over her shoulder and clicked open the email. She read it through twice. Jessica was doing her own research. That was good, it meant, that she’d have someone in the club who could help her plan and explain. And that person… was the Groves and Hayles heiress.

Lyssa clicked open the document with her poems.

These are really good, Lyssa thought. Maybe they also needed a literary magazine?

Lyssa shook her head. She couldn’t do everything. Still, Jessica was obviously practicing with different poetic metre and forms. Lyssa was reading the poem about a spider, but also not a spider, and she visualized a painting or drawing in her head. Katia was her roommate, she could probably get her to get the Art club to produce art for a short magazine. What could be the harm? Especially if someone with Jessica or Katia's talents took over the project.

Lyssa cracked her fingers and sat up straight.

Dear Jessica,

Thank you for your note. I am glad you are also doing some research on Speech and Debate. I have also been doing the same. Reading more, I feel like we could start with the Speech part of speech and debate till we have enough people. I also don’t know how it would work at school. Are there other schools we could debate? Or do we merely do it at school. If so, can we get the teachers to adjudicate? Things to think about, but I have permission to have the club, so first step achieved and would love your help, if you are interested, in setting this up.

On a slightly different note. After reading your poems I would like to suggest that we also work with the Aronos to get an annual literary edition of the school paper. Your poems are good. Really good. I love the different uses of form and rhyme scheme to convey different emotions and the degrees of those emotions. I will say that, possibly because of where I am today, the Haiku “Grim mountain ranges up above // The air is thick and hot now // Each breath comes slowly” sticks with me. I don’t think you should publish these if you don’t want to, but you could, and I think having a literary edition could spark a bit more culture at Sonora.

Thank you for sharing your writing with me. It means a lot. I know it is never easy to release your words out into the world where you can no longer control their meanings and others' reactions to them. Especially words that are personal. I feel honored that you shared them with me.

I hope you are able to stay cool this summer.

Keep well and keep writing!

Lyssa.

Lyssa reread her email over twice, adding the Haiku she liked after rereading the poems. Specific compliments. Jessica had a real voice. Lyssa could feel a soft gray fog covering most of her words, with shining points of color jumping out. Lyssa had heard that you can tell a lot about a person by reading their writing, but it seemed to hold true for Jessica. Lyssa felt like she understood the other girl better.

She made a note in her notebook about checking to see who was heading Aronos this year when she got back to school.

She then flipped back to the book she had been reading the day before and an open internet tab. Ok, Congressional Debate. Would this work at school? Lyssa thought. She suddenly realized that she didn’t know if the Wizarding World had a congress.

“Why is there no social sciences class!” she said loud enough for the reference librarian looked up over her feet.

“Lyssa, are you really going to make me say it?”

“Sorry Ms. Greene,” Lyssa said with a wave and made a note in her book to ask about creating a history class for herself next year.

41 Lyssa Fitzgerald Wait... me? I mean, hello! 1421 0 5

Jessica Hayles

May 07, 2020 8:12 PM

Hello, how goes? by Jessica Hayles

There was an argument going on, and Jessica could not say she genuinely found it particularly interesting. Mara, it seemed, was immersing herself in spellbooks and theory supplements and history books and law books, and Carmela, apparently, had three problems with this: first of all, that it was very expensive, second of all, that there were too many owls flying to their building, and finally, that she just didn't like it. Dad didn't mind if Mara had her mail delivered to the house under Jessica's name, but the last point had to be addressed, and was being addressed in the living room, with both Jessica's sister and her nanny getting sharper and sharper by the moment. Avoiding eye contact with anyone, she slipped out as discreetly as possible, before it occurred to any of them to ask her for an opinion.

She opened her computer, thinking vaguely of doing some online shopping of her own until the argument stopped blocking all the routes to the swimming pool, and noticed a new message bubble on the taskbar. Clicking it, she expected to see an advertisement, and instead was confronted with a wall of text.

As she read the praise of her work, she could feel the color in her cheeks rising as her mouth drew involuntarily into a smile. She pressed the backs of her fingers on one hand against her cheek while she scrolled with the other one. Finally, she reached the end and clicked the reply button, and a blank pop-up appeared for her to respond in.

Hi again, she typed.

Count me in for setting things up. I know there are other magic schools (sometimes the - she paused for a moment, unsure whether she would get in trouble again if she sent an e-mail with the word 'Quidditch' in it, and then backspaced and started that sentence over. I know there are other schools like ours, because the sports people go play against them sometimes. I don't know if they would have anyone for us to work with, though. Still, if we got a few people, we could just divide into teams and compete against each other if we need to. Or just...declaim in public and see what people think of it, if we can't get the teachers to adjudicate, though hopefully some of them would.

I'm glad you enjoyed the poems! That haiku describes the weather out here right now; the humidity is terrible. Thank God for swimming. I don't know if just the two of us would be enough writers to justify a literary magazine - but who knows? There could be more of us around school and none of us know the others exist. We should ask around when school's back in session.

It's nice to have an appreciative reader - it gets kind of lonely at school sometimes without anyone to show anything to. Writing's about communication, you know? And it can be with yourself, but it's nice to see what it says to other people as well. I've missed ELA so much. They let me take a history class and a lit class through the mail this year, but it's not the same. We have got to get that place cultured up if at all possible.

Take care,

Jessica

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