Article 6: Four Poems

by Taylor Flett

Sleepless Night

I hear them,
On the right,
Above me;
Their cries,
Their laughter,
Pierce through layers
Of exposed silence.

I hear them.
Through the walls;
Their voices,
Their shouting,
Cascading into me
Fast and heavy
A single sound like a heartbeat.

The thump-thump,
Startles me,
Reaches me,
Tells me,
To be awake
And be Restless.
Listen and there is more.

These Walls Can See

He seeks comfort from
Another bed
Spilling his grief
Between sweat and sheets

She whispers her secrets
into needle and thread
A silence woven
Within lace and stitch

They once ticked as one
Now fall clumsily into
Their own shame
Lost without reason

Too blind to see
The mess they done
Too loss in grief
To find their way back

A Lament for a Girl

She’s afraid of losing her shred of hope,
Her precious jewels midst broken trinkets and dreams,
That wild spark burning so bright it caught their eyes,
But she feels it dimming to a blue flick of light.
They smother it with dirt and decaying rose petals,
The flame they wish to put out before it burns them,

Burn, Burn, Burn
The spark speaks to her,
Become wild with life child,
Not still and gray with a forgotten name.
That spark gives her strength to rise,
Before they shovel in the dirt.

Stolen Moments

I was a child.
I was a brother, a sister;
I was a daughter, a son;
I was a nephew, a niece;
I was a grandchild;
I was innocent.

I laughed, dreamed and loved,
I lived, hoped and cried.
I ran wild and carefree,
Unaware of the monsters
That lurked within shadows.
I was innocent.

Still they tricked,
They stole,
They shattered
The child in me,
Unraveling my innocence.

Step by step,
Up those stairs,
I became undone.
Cut by cut,
Those shiny shears,
Where was my innocence?

About the Poet: Taylor Flett is a young Cree woman from Split Lake, Manitoba. This is her third year at the University College of the North, currently studying English as her major. Taylor has goals of becoming an elementary teacher and hopefully a writer one day. She is an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy novels. Taylor also enjoys fishing with her family and binge-watching Netflix.

Instructor’s Remarks: As a poet, Taylor Flett turns moments of her life experiences into deep thought, and then express them in poetic words. Some of her thoughts were so deep that it took her long time to dig out from her memories. The poem of “Stolen Moments” took her three years to think what has been stolen from her and her families. Besides writing poems, Taylor Flett is also a close reader and a good interpreter of the literary texts she studied with me in the three literature courses: Indigenous Women and Literature 1, Critical Theory 2 and Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal Literature 2.(Dr. Ying Kong)