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# Estrangement
- URL: https://lucia.ghost.io/issue-three-estrangement/
- Published: 2019-07-01T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-04T19:44:55.000Z
- Description: The winner of Lucia’s poetry award writes of remembering her voice before the alphabet, and evokes nostalgia for something ephemeral and eternal at once. A softly stunning poem.
- Author: Laura Lowery
- Tags: Issue Three | Wild, #A poem by Teresa Williams, #Poetry Award, #current-issue

This is what I remember:

Before the alphabet,

I was walking next to the river of this valley,

we sang songs to each other, while the sun

wrote loves notes on the water.

When I opened my mouth,

a waterfall fell out, or a wolf howled

from a far away cave. When the ravens

laughed, we all laughed together.

Listening to my body,

I felt the stories in the heavy rains

touching the red dust of the deserts,

washing rocks and bones into the night.

Before the alphabet,

my voice was cerulean, and never

alone like now, cramped 

inside a language that splinters me.

Now, people only talk to other people,

but I still talk to the moon.

I use vehement phonetics, while the moon

stays eerily mute. 

Stubborn, I sit in the grass, waiting.

Sometimes nostalgia looks like idleness.

A swallow breaks the silence

and without knowing why

I put my head on the ground.