[POEM] I Wish I Still Had Time to Ask About The Camellias by Erin Weeks
"This piece focuses on the realization that I can no longer ask my grandmother, who has dementia, about the details of her life when she was younger; it's a reflection on memories being lost within a person."
![[POEM] I Wish I Still Had Time to Ask About The Camellias by Erin Weeks](/content/images/size/w1200/2026/02/Ninth-Heaven-Twitter-Header-3.png)
I Wish I Still Had Time to Ask About The Camellias
by Erin Weeks
I’ve been thinking about grandmothers
and the way they toss basketfuls of heat lightning
from cloud to inheritor cloud
removing pits from the flesh of brined mythology
to be canned and shelved before parhelion, when the sun’ll split
into smiles of fool’s gold.
When mine was born they named
her brightness, and she
took the light with her to the end of the world
where the camellias are.
I know only so much;
from her own grandmother’s home she bird-walked
through time, disentangling the world from itself
with a fine-toothed comb, claiming her place in a catty-corner of
brief, small-town sky.
Now, directionless planes go on,
bending the flowers they pass overhead
and cutting distrails through what she never thought
to say.
Author Bio
Erin Weeks is a poet and journalist native to South Carolina. Her personal writing often focuses on themes of home and nostalgia, and her first chapbook, Origins of My Love, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2021. She can be found on Instagram at @erinwkzzfrdrk.