Friday from the Archives: “Letter to Myself Twenty-Five Years Ago” a poem by Julie Fay with photography by Jacquelyn Tait Leebrick in NCLR 2007
Happy National Poetry Month! Our April Poetry Prize contests are both open for submission! This year marks the 15th anniversary for our James Applewhite Poetry Prize contest, celebrating the best written poem by a North Carolina poet. (Our Green Prize contest is back for a fourth year!)
In our 2007 issue we “Commemorated 100 Years of Writers and Writing at East Carolina University” Included in those pieces were this poem by ECU English Department Professor Julie Fay. Impress your twenty-five years ago self and enter either of poetry prize contests today!
LETTER TO MYSELF TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
I have been reading your journal all night
the private pages you hoped someone would find
and admire – no, love you for writing.
You’ll spend years convinced how unworthy you are,
find fault with those who insist
they love you, laugh it off when they ask you
to marry them. In the middle of the poem
you’ll be writing now, your father will phone
and you’ll tell him – again – how unhappy
you were those years – these years you’re
living now and he still won’t hear you!
But in twenty-five years – twenty-four, twenty-three
(it happens slowly) you won’t care, finally, that he doesn’t.
Once your mother – how can I say it gently? – dies
in her prime without having liked much less loved
herself, you’ll learn to be your own loving
parent, caress your soft arms, walk up thick
carpeted stairs to a comfortable room of your
own, room with a view (You don’t even know
these allusions!) a room you never dreamed
you’d get for yourself (a husband would provide,
you thought) and you’ll look for something you lost
for tomorrow’s class (you’re going to be a college
professor!) and you’ll find these bitter-soft pages that sting
with age’s perfume, the pages you’re writing tonight.
Oh, twenty-five-years-ago-me,
I love you as much as anyone will and more, I
who have your adolescent heart in my chest
in my palm, so brittle it could crumble
like paper after twenty-five bitter-sweet years.
Add the 2007 issue to your collection today!
