Three Poems (Camille Norvaisas)
Camille Norvaisas
If We Could Have One More Conversation
Mom, how did you come to trust a man?
To willingly have sex?
To have faith that there would be pleasure in the act—
or those hands would have a tender touch?
Did you think that nothing else could ever be
so bad that you took a chance on my father,
a blond-haired, pale-eyed charmer?
And all those years, I hated you and the drink,
I hid behind heavy metal lyrics, spandex, and eyeliner.
You told me more than once that if I hadn’t been born,
you’d have killed yourself long ago. Those words
fit like an umbilical cord snug around my neck.
If only I could tell you I read the newspaper articles,
wailed out loud at the thought of you, 14 years old,
right hand raised in the air,
Do you swear to tell the truth?
reporting the brutal moments to the jury,
The whole truth?
even as your mother testifies on his behalf.
And nothing but the truth?
If only you could have locked up the memories.
So help you God?
Cliché
At first she asks, So what have you been writing lately?
but soon interrupts to share news with the book club ladies
that her nephew was accepted at Wharton.
Later, while apologizing for the hasty interjection,
her lips pinch so tight they seem to disappear in her face
and she offers, You understand, don't you?
It's just that your poetry is heavy stuff.
What I understand is that we're here to drink
champagne with raspberries in fluted glasses,
share appetizers, and how our husbands never
load the dishwasher correctly.
What if it was her daughter whose virginity
was stolen? And her non-sheet-folding husband
was the one that took it?
Would she brush it under the rug? Look the other way?
Tell her little girl, "It'll be okay, honey, you just need some rest"?
Yes. I answer. It is heavy stuff.
This Did Not Happen
Your face blown apart by the shotgun
the shell, hot and steaming mad
as it penetrated your unshaven cheek
while you slept fitfully on the couch.
Your lips exploding from the force of the blast,
the very lips that had explored places no father
ever should, said words no man should
ever utter to his young daughter.
My 14-year-old mother knocked back
after squeezing the unlocked trigger,
the metal taste of blood as the gun
kicked up to meet her face.
The ringing in her ears much the same
as the screams from her mother and sisters
who’d emerged from their hiding places.
The four of them huddled together as your
blood was creeping toward their feet.
Copyright Credit: Camille Norvaisas, “If We Could Have One More Conversation," "Cliché" and "This Did Not Happen" from Survival & Beyond, Issue 3 / Summer 2025 (Safe Passage, 2025). Copyright © 2025 by Safe Passage. Reprinted with the permission of the author.