Jessamine

Found in the diaries of Leslie Anne Strong 1905 - 1979

Once there was a girl and she was lovely

Her name was Jessamine, gorgeous thing

It was 1923

She knew what she meant to me

But by 1927

She had gone up to heaven

 

Well, I met her at Saccharine Branch Women’s College

We shared a rented room, in a house in town

She said it was love at first sight

Love, so strange and new to me

But it was ecstasy

Every moment spent with her

 

Four years, and there we stayed

And we laughed, worked, and played

But one day, something went wrong

They found out

 

It was our last year. We had just graduated

One girl in our house saw us out on the lawn

Saw me kiss her sweet lips

And at the break of dawn

The next morning

We were asked to leave

 

So we left

 

And went to stay with some boyfriends

 

But what happened then

Is still hard for me to say

Only, the boys had too much liquor

And wanted us to play

But their minds grew even sicker

When we answered to them, “nay”

 

They took away my Jessamine

And had their way with her

 

I woke up in a hospital bed

Bruised, and sore, and bleeding red

 

But when I asked “Where is my Jessamine?” No one would say

 

I wrote to her parents in Idaho

But they gave me no reply

 

I felt so lonely and worried and broken

I was sure that I would die

 

The only thing that got me through, was to write and work and stay

Preoccupied with other things

I became quite successful, for my day

 

But there was always an empty place on my bed

Where Jessamine used to lay

 

It was only much later in my life that I found out what truly happened

From a youth of twenty years old

 

She was made pregnant that fateful night, and knew it from the start. She telephoned the hospital, telephoned her mother, and was whisked away from me

My Jessamine was made to marry the man who put her in disgrace

Nine months later, my Jessamine was dead

A baby boy in her place

The baby’s name was "Leslie" - the last word uttered on her sweet lips

So said the boy himself

And when I began to cry

He pulled me close, as if he were my own son

“Mother loved you” was what he told me “My father told me this himself”

“He confessed to me all that he had done, in a letter just last year”

“When I sought him out to confront him, he was an hour dead in his chair”

“He took a pistol through the head for his guilt”

“But understand, he was not an evil man, but a kind man haunted by evilness”

“He told me to search for you, and to take care of you, as if you were my own mother”

“And to let you have your chance, to say a proper farewell to her”

 

So there I was

Twenty years later

And six feet below me

The remains of my Jessamine

 

But by my side

With a tear in his eye

Was a boy with all his mothers’ kindness

Author's Note

This is a freestyle poem more than anything else. It does not have much proper form to it, and that is how I intended it to be. It is mostly the story that I felt was important.

Comments and critiques are appreciated.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

this is so well written...a narrative poem with such heart and message...

people hate, people are judgmental...and others needlessly suffer...

love has no boundaries...at least it shouldn't.

you have this a certain rhythm that fit the theme so well...

there was a smoothness for awhile, but then it lost something of the rhythm as the story turned tragic...it jars the reader much as the content does. and it should.

[A. Amos]

Alice you started like a poem and then turned into a beautiful poetic story, I was with you till the end simply mind blowing my friend... Bravo