In the never‑dark, I hear Memory feast
on regrets too tender to shed.
A spindly, many‑limbed beast
weaving Time’s loom with golden thread.
Her stinger—sweet whispers furred with rot—
distills insight with a venomous ache.
A snare in every turn of thought,
fragile hopes seared awake.
Spider-silk veils each corner of my mind;
her sun‑spun web nets every bemoaned should‑have.
Each mirrored strand reveals every buried could‑have
I can’t shake loose, lest my old wounds unwind.
She spins those seams until they fall apart,
toppling Shame’s regime with her sunlit heart.
I hear Nóttleysa still—gnawing at thin air—
devouring half-truths I’d mythologized, armor I wore so tight;
she slips away, and suddenly I’m bare,
bones unbound—awash in weightless sunlight.
inspo: My fixation on Old Norse—still going strong—sparked both the title and pulse of this poem. The crush began a few years back while I was knee-deep in world-building for my long-simmering Elementals project. I own shelves of texts on half a dozen ancient cultures, but nothing grabs me like those jagged Norse consonants and sun-bright kennings. Blame it first on the History series Vikings. I fell hard for Ragnar Lothbrok (the mythological character, not the Aussie actor), pestered Brody for that undercut—no luck—and relished every scene that dropped real Old Norse alongside Old English. Watching the show’s heathens side-eye medieval Catholics was like catnip. From there I stumbled onto Dr. Jackson Crawford—the cowboy-linguist who opens each FREE YouTube video with a panoramic sweep of beautiful sky. His generous videos (and book list) turbo-charged my studying; without them I’d still be mispronouncing þ and ð. A rabbit hole or two later, I found the word Nóttleysa—“nightless days,” or “insomnia,” the bright-all-night stretch of a Scandinavian summer—and fell in love with it. So, I saved it in my “poetry inspo” folder like it was some kind of rare bead, waiting for the right string of words to come along. Since memoir writing has been consuming my blog schedule lately, I allowed myself to experiment: creating a quick poem instead of leaving the blog silent. Why not also check off an item from my bucket list by making it rhyme? (I know, I know, it’s cringe, but I wanted it so bad.) When this memory-weaving spider (shout-out to Arachne—the OG weaver) manifested, she refused to let any corner of my past go dark, and everything clicked into place. Endless daylight means no hiding places. Relentless introspection, rethinking, and the recall of past events also leave few places to hide. It fit perfectly. (Back to prose soon, I promise—right after I shake the silk off my sleeves.)
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My goodness, this is beautiful!
Your poems have the same raw, honest and open quality as your memoir writing – and so vivid. I have the sense of actually being “in the scene” – a true test of good writing in any genre, in my humble opinion.
I have experienced actual “nightless days” in Denmark – and I love how you tie this to your own struggles with “introspection and rethinking and recalling of events”. Perfection!
Thank you for this—I’m always so anxious when I try something new, never quite sure how it’ll land. You and others like you with this blog have helped me grow my confidence. And the rhyming “rule” was probably the biggest unnecessary writing challenge I’ve forced myself to adhere to recently, which was refreshing and fun. I’ve just always wanted to write something like it since I was a little girl reading poetry. Also, I am officially jelly—I would love to hear about that experience! It was completely foreign to me reading about it and I loved imagining it, especially from the perspective of early humans and how frightening or odd that must’ve been to them. I’d love to visit the area. Brody and I both would, we talk about it often!