SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.
Let me tell you about leaving, how it was almost easy. Sometimes a mandarin is so ripe that its skin wants to be peeled, falls away as your fingers get close, pockets of air under the surface
waiting for release. I was ready like that, open to other hands, mouths, scents. I feared being skipped over, not picked in time. Frostbite. At first it was a long December then it was spring
in my step, everyone noticed. Still I buried a guilt that I could have done better, that I had no right to ripen. I had a secret tally of faults that I used against myself like a rainstorm. I made judges out of accidental men, took punishment hungrily. Until
it was enough. Only then could I let myself look back, see how smugly we walked the streets of Philadelphia, rapt, wrapped around each other. Then baby daughter mornings in the corner condo, LA beach sun streaming in, smells of talcum. Remember, I said almost. We were once a light, he and I. What did we know then of dimming?
Nancy Murphy is a Los Angeles-based writer and recent winner of the Aurora Poetry contest. Previous publications include Gyroscope Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Ekphrastic Review, The Baltimore Review, and others. Through the non-profit WriteGirl, Nancy has mentored teen girls and incarcerated teen girls and boys at writing workshops. Her first chapbook, The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence, is forthcoming from Gyroscope Press in fall 2022. More at nancymurphywriter.com.
