Podcast interview and poetry
Four Wishes
By Tamara Raidt
in my postbox. It was some new company’s stunt
with one-year free trial. I read the instructions carefully:
one for each season; one year to be fulfilled. I took
the first one and wished myself happiness, health and
blooming in life. I wrapped it in a leaf and left it hanging
in a tree. The second one was for the summer. I wished myself
success, balance with things and discovering new parts of me.
I stuck it to the stomach of a turtle in Costa Rica and watched it
vanish into the sea. Then came autumn. I wished myself strength,
battle in disease, hope in despair. I wrote my wish inside the peel
of an orange that I left drying by the fire. The last one was
for the winter : I wished myself darker moments, tough decisions to
make, filled with regrets, and lots of failures so I would get the chance
to learn from it. I buried this one deep under the snow. I whispered it to
a snowman who kept my secrets warm under his coat. One year
went by. I searched the earth for my wishes. But the tree was dead,
the turtle was gone, the orange peel was missing, and the snowman had
melted. No more witness to my wishes. But they had left behind :
four shy seeds ready to grow. The free trial was over. I put them in
a cozy box with a little blanket for the ride and handed them to
the postman so they could wander the world, through places where
they would be most needed.
My sponge heart
My sponge-heart is extensible for
every problem to fit in.
Three days ago, a colleague I had
only met for two of three coffees
killed himself.
I grieved like he had been a part of
my family, like he had been my lover
for a lifetime.
I am thinking of him in a bus teeming
with strangers and I try to imagine
their lives.
Most of them look sad and I am sad
for them, I am sad for me because
I am part
of those strangers, so does it make
me a stranger myself? I spend
so much time
with myself and then I don’t even
know me. I spend so much time
with special people
who have special hearts, then they
leave and I didn’t see it coming.
I couldn’t leave
even if I wanted to. I couldn’t live
barefoot on a beach, away from
the world for
I need to tell the reasons why to
the ones I have: why do I love
you?
why are you different from the pack?
So this man whose name now
I know
he might’ve had a sponge-heart
with enough space for every issue
of the world.
And then again, he couldn’t have
been living barefoot on a beach
away from the world
because the world was in him so
how do you escape the things that
grow inside of you?
You don’t escape. You either
grow with it or grow apart.
But growing
apart is still growth, walking away
is still being in motion, a sponge-
heart
is still a heart, maybe not
the strongest one, not the one
you fancy the most.
It’s the one you’ve been given
to face the world, to embrace
the wonders
scattered on your path.
Because a sponge-heart has eyes
and it sees
its own things on the side of the road
that were forgotten to be called
beautiful.
Tamara Raidt
Sunday Writers' Club member
Tamara, born in 1998, comes from a multicultural background: French is her mother tongue while German is her second language. She grew up on the countryside in France, near Lyon (South East) and lived in a few countries for her studies: from Germany, through Austria to Scotland, where she currently studies Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh.
She has been writing since her childhood. Her first poem was about slugs that went ice-skating. Now she is writing about nature, introspection and women and their experience in society. She also writes short stories and has tried a few times to write novels in French, even though English remains her preferred language for poetry. She has published a bilingual poetry collection My mind on a chalkboard in March 2021 and her poetry has appeared in Rattle Poetry, Variant Lit and Vita Brevis.
Your can read more of Tamara’s poetry online here:
Variant Lit, “The ladder I won’t climb”: The Ladder I Won’t Climb | Variant Literature
Rattle poetry: “Self-Doubt” by Tamara Raidt – Rattle: Poetry
The Drabble: Endless Quest | (wordpress.com)