she (a gift for Gill)
By Marley Orange
she
she lives with three others, i live down the hallshe is just ten steps away
she Laughs and i know everything will be okay
she wears sundresses, flashy pants, and works of art upon her ears
she carries a maroon backpack and a blue hydro flask
she flaunts chipped paint in open-toed birkenstocks
she covers her wrist with a rose
she looks at it and sees a pause between two clauses amidst leaves and petals
she likes to create and she likes to paint
she doesn’t realize how good she is at things others attempt
she likes tie-dye, i think
she has an aura of orange, red, and maybe pink
she is a warm summer day in January
she is as if the ideation of an optimist has been manifested into five feet and eight inches
she has curly hair like ramen noodles
she can’t seem to stop several stubborn locks from obscuring the sight of her glistening eyes
she sees the best in people and the best in the world with those eyes
she often does not understand the hatred that plagues it for
she is kind and she is warm and she is devoid of hate
she looks into the fiery pit of a nucleus sweltering with hatred and the delusion of superiority
she stares it in the face, and with the bravery of one woman
she Laughs.
she has hopefully realized that it is no coincidence
she makes connections with people wherever she goes and this is because
she is a special type of person.
she has a way of making you feel like you are a part of something when you are a part of nothing
she is a supernova, a powerful explosion
she is thousands of light-years away, but she illuminates the universe
she will someday leave a black hole in her place, and we will be nothing but lucky to have seen something so bright and grand
she doesn’t know if god is real
she lives with three others, i live down the hall
she is just ten steps away
she Laughs and i know everything will be okay
Reflection
As my process for writing this poem about Gill, I began by talking to her and trying to pick out several small details to take mental note of. For example, I took note of her tattoo of a rose on her wrist, her Birkenstocks and chipped paint on her toe nails, etcetera. I also tried to take note of more abstract things, like the way she makes people feel. I began to feel overflowing with inspiration, and began writing down stanzas in the Notes app on my phone as I was walking with her. I rushed back to my room to write these stanzas down in a document, so as to format and order them. About 15 minutes later, I went to the library and did a total brain dump on the page. The poem was a stream of consciousness. I actually liked the way it sounded, how you could almost hear the thoughts as they were coming out of my head. I felt as if it made the poem more personal. I reformatted and reordered a lot of things, but tried to leave some of the original wording and ordering in the poem. I purposefully have dehumanized Gill on one line, and then humanized her on the next. Example: “she will someday leave a black hole in her place, and we will be nothing but lucky to have seen something so bright and grand / she doesn’t know if god is real”. This poem was supposed to be an ode in a way. I made the decision to not capitalize anything except for the L in laugh. I was debating whether or not I should capitalize every She and Her, as if she was a god, but I decided I did not like the way it looked. I like the lack of capitalization throughout much better, and it makes the word laugh stand out a lot, which I like. The near-final stanza about supernovas was something that just came out as I was writing out a stream of consciousness. I used to be really into space when I was younger, and know a lot about supernovas, black holes, and other things. To make sure everything I said was accurate I double checked with a NASA article I found online entitled “What is a Supernova?”[1] Another important aspect of the poem is how I chose to only have lines starting with “she,” and never mention Gill by name. This in a way empowers her to be more than just one person, but the ideation of some woman for anyone who may read it. This did make things a little difficult on the writing side however, because it isn’t easy to always write sentences starting with “she,” because I wanted to make a lot of other observations about how she makes people feel for example, and had to work around this by relating everything back to her. All in all, starting every line with she definitely made sure that I couldn’t go off on a tangent, and had to keep my focus on Gill the whole poem.[1] “What is a supernova?” NASA Science, Oct. 23, 2019, https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/supernova/en/, last accessed Apr. 23, 2021.