to love someone who is halfway, by Ophelia Monet

by Ophelia Monet

Photo by Lisa Verena Pape

You’ll feel alive if you'd drink a steaming mug of 
coffee or even if you’d just hold something warm


like a bowl of soup or a blanket or my hand.
Come now, take a bite of this bougatsa and tell


me you don’t feel like someone new, repurposed,
not so empty after all. You’ve hardly touched the


stone heart on your plate, are you not hungry?
I thought things made of death were your favorite,


but perhaps I am misremembering and you’re not
actually here, after all. If you look outside, you’ll


see the tulips are blooming and warmer days are
coming— the dense snow has almost melted 


entirely and you know what that means,
don’t you? It means you can come out from


your shell and be a hint of yourself again; I’ve even
made some coffee and started your car for you, I


can put this stone heart in some tupperware to take
for the road, if you’d like. 

Ophelia is an educator, mother, and storm chaser (yes, really), living in the suburbs of Cincinnati with her husband and their son. She began writing in 2022, after learning that her late mother was a published writer under a pseudonym. She can often be found reading a fantasy novel (perhaps she is on her tenth re-read of The Name of the Wind) and wandering barefoot through forests. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Malu Zine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Loud Coffee Press, Aureation Zine, and Blue Lake Review. Find her on Instagram at @mysoullaidbare.

ASK THE AUTHOR

Hi Ophelia, Thank you for sharing your words with us. We have to ask … What or who inspires you? 

I am fortunate to have many inspirations. My husband and son inspire me to strive to be a better person, and I am immensely grateful for them and their unconditional love. My father, who immigrated to the United States when he was only sixteen years old, inspires me to work hard at all that I do, even when things may seem impossible. My mother, who passed ten years ago, is my inspiration for writing. In 2022, I worked up the courage to go through some of her personal belongings that I had kept hidden away in storage. While sorting through her journals and papers, I learned that she was a poet who had been published under a pseudonym. I hadn’t attempted to write poetry before making this discovery, but I figured I would give it a shot and at the very least, I thought it would be a good outlet. I ended up falling in love with writing poetry, and it has become one of my most favorite outlets.   

What is the best advice you ever received?

This feels a bit cliché, but the best advice I’ve ever received is to always reply “I’ll get back to you on that” instead of outright agreeing when someone asks me to commit to something. As a recovering people-pleaser, I’ve learned that this is the best way to give myself time to give a response that reflects what I want to do, as opposed to saying “yes” immediately based on what I think that person wants me to say. This has helped me on the journey towards honoring myself, my needs, and my boundaries.

Do you write to prompts? If so, what's your favorite? If not, why not?

I sometimes actively seek out prompts to write to, primarily when I feel I’m in a rut with my writing. I find that for me personally, prompts are a great way to spark creativity when I’m stuck or feeling stale. My favorite types of prompts are phrases that must be used within a poem, but I also enjoy prompts that are open-ended, as well. My favorite prompt that I’ve used in my writing is “sonnet against silence”, which was a phrase someone (@jacob.bebob) on Instagram used to describe the workings of physics.