She was silent again, until her hand took hold of mine and she confided, “I couldn’t look at the stars for years after my mom died.”
Ice ran through my veins at the sadness in her voice. She pointed at the plastic stars. “Every time I looked up at them, I felt small, unimportant… and completely alone. I’d look at them and wonder where she was, wonder if there was even a heaven.” She shook her head. “My mom did so many bad things, Levi. Maybe not bad, but reckless things. Drugs, never having a home for us.”
“Where did you live?” I asked, my voice husky with sympathy at the pain she was in.
Elsie sighed and replied, “Mainly on the streets.” She looked up at me. “It’s all I’ve ever really known. And being here has been…” she inhaled and exhaled, “divine.”
There was nothing to say, so I held her closer. She didn’t say anything else about her mamma and I didn’t want to make her any sadder than she was, so I asked, “Why do you love poetry so much?”
This time when she took in a breath, it wasn’t filled with pain. “I don’t really know. I’ve just always been fascinated with words—how they sound, their structure, their meanings,” she cut herself off, then said, “how they can be used for good… and used for bad.”
I frowned, wondering what she meant when she flipped onto her stomach and laid her hands on my chest. I ran my fingers through her hair, completely infatuated with everything she was saying.
“Bad?” I questioned, when Elsie immediately paled. “What?” I asked, my hand stopping mid-stroke on her hair.
Elsie shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You sure?” I pushed, but she smiled and nodded.
Inhaling, she said, “I suppose I became fascinated with words because I lived without them or sound until I was eight.”
“Eight?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I inherited my deafness from my mom—who was deaf in both ears.” She pointed to her right ear. “I had low hearing in this ear. When I was eight, we found out about a new surgical technique that could restore the hearing in my right ear.” Her eyes dropped. “My mom had no money. Somehow she managed to scrape enough together to pay for my surgery—I don’t know how. Though I can guess.”
I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed it, a blush coating her cheeks. “When I woke from the surgery, I had been fitted with a hearing aid. I could hear, not a huge lot better, but it sounded like thunder compared to what little I had before. I remember being confused at the sounds all around me. At people speaking to me.” She ran her fingers over my lips. “I would hear them, and match the sounds up with the movement of their lips. My mom didn’t speak, couldn’t speak. When she tried, sometimes her pronunciation was too difficult to understand. So I had to learn for myself. I had to listen and learn. I learned and became obsessed with words.” She shrugged. “I guess it never went away.”
“And the poetry?”
Elsie’s eyes grew shiny and she pointed to the ceiling. “I made up that little rhyme about those plastic stars. It ignited something within me… something that kept me going even when I wasn’t sure I could.”
I didn’t say anything else, and Elsie laid her cheek on my chest. “When my mom died, I thought I’d never write poetry, again. I never thought I’d look at the stars, again.”
My chest ached with sympathy, when she rasped, “But the words came regardless and I just had to write them down.” She turned her head to me, a tear falling down her cheek. “I tried to stop them, but the thought of how my mom loved to read my poems… when she was thinking clear... I had to write them down. There was no choice. They would fill my head until I had to purge them on the page.”
“What were they about?” I asked softly.
“Lots of things, but… mainly her. How my life was without her, what I’d do if I could only see her one more time.”
A lump clogged my throat and images of my own mamma came to mind. I could feel Elsie’s pain, because I felt it too. Silence took over, then I asked, “Can I hear some?”
Elsie stilled.
I shifted and assured, “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
“It’s not that,” she pushed. “I just… nobody’s heard it since my mom. I’ve never spoken them aloud.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered and saw Elsie relax.
I closed my eyes, feeling drained and tired, when I heard, “I wrote this after my mom died. When I was in care, in a group home, and I had nobody to talk to.”
My eyes snapped open as a million questions flooded my mind. Care? Group home? But all that fell away when she began reciting her poem.
“Heaven’s Door,” she announced. Her eyes were unfocused as the gutting words poured out:
“I’d search the world for Heaven’s Door,
Over mountains and valleys, each sandy shore.
I’d find the stairway, soaring through clouds,
I'd climb each step, without making a sound.
I’d arrive at the door of glimmering gold,
I’d slip through unnoticed, not stirring a soul.