Acceptance

From “Felicity” by Hannah Jenkins

Edited by Craig, Giwa, Ryan & Thompson Engen Books

Newfoundland and Labrador’s Engen Books partnered with Quadrangle NL to make a collection celebrating 2SLGBTQAI+ writers and stories, featuring 22 stories in all. The book was made in support of Quadrangle’s mission to create a community centre for 2SLGBTQAI+ individuals and organizations in Newfoundland and Labrador, a space that is a resource for building community resilience and connection and that provides supports for existing initiatives of the 2SLGBTQAI+ community.

In this gorgeous excerpt from Hannah Jenkins, the author draws on all the senses to describe moments of abandon and feelings of deep love, consequences be damned, and what it means to the psyche to find a true human connection.

She awakes exactly as I do.

We quietly roll and entwine our fingers between each other, like ivy, wrapping its way across an old Victorian terrace. I am now unable to distinguish my thigh from the blue-black pajama bottoms that encases them, or her hand from my stomach where it gently roves amid the blankets.

We lie here, in this room that smells entirely like her. I briefly register the dim, blurred glow of a desk light upon her abandoned copy of The Importance of Being Earnest, the gentle hum of our refrigerator drifting through the crevices of the bedroom door. In this moment, I am every bit as in love with myself as I am with her.

I want to remember everything about us. I want to taste every shared breakfast, and every overpriced piece of cinema popcorn. I want to feel the tingles she sends down my spine as she runs her nails through my hair, or presses her fingertips against my wrist in the empty supermarket. I try to hone in on the fuzzy soundtrack of her voice that reverberates in my mind as she reads Voltaire and tells me I look beautiful in white.

But right now, her even breathing is a sound I am prepared to forfeit the English language for. My mind softly sways in the gusts of her exhales, like loose dandelion seeds in the wind, wondering if it may call this summer breeze a home. As I accidentally brush my lips across the warm skin behind “…one of us ought to feel embarrassed soon, worry what this means, think that perhaps this isn’t quite what roommates do.” her left ear, I realize that one of us ought to feel embarrassed soon, worry what this means, think that perhaps this isn’t quite what roommates do. But we don’t. This throw blanket is so warm it would be a disservice to cast it off for something as trivial as shame, anyway. Tomorrow, I muse. Tomorrow sounds like a lovely day to think. ■

HANNAH JENKINS’ debut collection of poetry, The Birds Come Back in the Spring, was released this year by Engen Books. She is an award-winning Newfoundland and Labrador writer who is currently completing a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature. She is an active member of her university’s writing community where she was on the editorial board of her school’s journal and is currently serving as President of the Grenfell Campus Literary Society for the third year—a role dedicated to encouraging creative expression and fostering a sense of community among students. Hannah’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in anthologies, newsletters, magazines and journals, including WORD Magazine and Mythology from the Rock. Her work has won awards such as the Grenfell Campus Moynes-Keshen John McCrae Poetry Award, and the Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador’s 2021 International Women’s Day Contest.