This Is How We Heal and Home Confections
– Poetry by Jamie Quinn Mader –
This Is How We Heal
This is how we heal:
Through chasing storms
And being caught in sun at dusk
By three coffees to get through the day
And shaking it off to auto tuned hits on the balcony
Through baking and warming our hearts with soft words
The sound of raindrops on the hood of your car at 3am
Somewhere between the late night drives and the ugly early morning vibes
We heal and grow big hearts from the shatters of explosive heartaches
This is how we heal:
Through daring fantasies with Gods and witches and magic and science fiction.
With happily ever afters and suspenseful cliffhangers
With talks of other worlds and escaping into our imagination
With sharing our stories as though they are epic
By having feelings on a stage in an almost crowded bar
Choking back tears cuz they blur the words on your phone
Through laughing at yourself and your candid stumbles
By having a story to tell, we open our hearts again to the world
And world fills all the cracks and all the in between pains
This is how we heal:
With small acts of kindness for another
Wishing them love and compassion you can’t fathom for yourself
Good morning texts and positive affirmations for others
Reminding your loved ones of the love in their life
And creating space for gentle patience with each other
Care packages, fresh baked goods, love letters and soft smiles across cities.
It all comes back and
One day you’ll say you are enough to someone you love and that someone
will be yourself.
This is how we heal:
By opening ourselves up
By feeling every feeling
By moving through the motions
By holding other’s hearts
By letting others hold our hearts
Healing is a conscious act of loving
Home Confections
From fish heads to pineapple squares
my grandparent’s kitchen was filled with sensation
always a hustle and always in motion
Purposeful, warm, and full of heart
Time lapse of me in this kitchen
At three sitting on counter testing the cake batter with a single finger
At twelve attempting to do math homework
At eighteen saying our goodbyes as you head east
There were pumpkin guts and pie fillings, rainbow trout scales,
and turkeys stuffed to the brim
over the years the smells varied and wandered
into new noses but love always smelled the strongest
It smelt like burnt bacon
because that’s how my nana liked it
It smelt like Sunday cakes and Saturday pies
because sweets were good for the week’s heartaches
feast of memories, flashbacks of flavours
I’d give anything for that warmth again
Not just the warmth of an on going oven
but the feeling of house becoming home
Houses and I never really clicked
I learned early that everything is temporary
and lived without roots, floating from space to space
with the constellations and the occasional pie to keep me warm
I’d encountered homes.
Spaces where love grows like succulents-
Slowly and gently but strong and long lasting
where the air is clear and the walls seem to hug you
That was never my fate though my grandparents did try.
but even after seven years I still felt like a guest
that I could never quite relax or let go
So for years I just held on to my days, restless.
I don’t recommend this.
Days are heavy.
And no one is strong enough to hold on forever
But days are also fragile and tend to shatter when dropped
I stepped on the shards of my past all the time
and they cut into my feet
sometimes a shard would get stuck
And that pain followed me
I remember everything, or a lot more than I should
I can recall painful days as if I’m still carrying them
and I often remember hurt more than healing
probably because I never made space to heal but always found places to bleed
I’m learning now, long overdue, how to heal and how to love
And often it comes with warm ovens and soft hugs
I bake sweets to heal the week’s heartaches
and let people let go of their days and pick up some hope for tomorrow
I can still smell pork pies and date squares on Christmas
And I can still see the lobsters crawl across the linoleum floor in the summer
I can still hear their laughter when I ask for spaghetti again
So I cook and bake for my family of friends so my house can feel like a home
I find healing in confections
and I find hope in flavours
I don’t burn the bacon but I know my Nana would be proud
That her and Papa taught me how to warm up a space into a loving place
About the Author – Jamie Quinn Mader
Jamie Quinn Mader (they/them) is a queer, mad, fat, non binary femme who writes from what is colonially known as Toronto, Ontario. They have written all their life to cope but only recently started working on honing their skills as a writer. They believe that good writing is transformative and magical. They truly think that literature can open doors to new ways of understanding one another’s experiences. They hope you enjoy the poems that have been published by Dreamers Creative Writing and look forward to sharing with you again in the future.
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