2023 Yeo Writing Prize Winners

First Place 2023

Shame & Unfolding Layers of Identity

Sara Beachy, Postdoc Fellow, Family and Community Medicine

I pushed in my clutch as I maneuvered into first gear pulling into a spot directly across
from the tourist taking a photo of a horse and buggy. Driving back home increasingly felt like I was sucked into a steampunk parallel universe. I sighed getting out of the car at the whiplash that inevitably happened when I visited home. My mom was already ahead of me making her way into the store when I heard my name called. I looked across the parking lot and saw my old Mennonite pastor weaving around cars to get to me.

“I am sorry about your grandmother” he said in the most pastoral voice.

I winced thinking about a discussion of my dissertation I had with my
advisor the week before. Oddly, the way my advisor spoke reminded me of this pastor who I had not seen for years. I had already self-diagnosed the problem as some sort of countertransference, or perhaps it was the lingering remnants of betrayal trauma when unconditional love ran dry that put me on edge. As my old pastor grabbed my shoulder in a sacerdotal clasp, I thought of one of the last times I had seen him. He had pulled me aside a week before my freshman year at college began to say, “I am scared for your soul, Sara. You think too much.” I had revisited those words repeatedly in the last decade as I struggled with balancing my Conservative Mennonite upbringing with the experiences I had, resulting in sleepless nights, confusion, and at times, humor. Like the time I had gotten feedback during a practicum that I sounded like “an undercover cop” when I asked intake questions about substance use. My punk roommates had screamed with laughter, afterwards educating me about drugs like a twisted mashup of jeopardy and DARE.

I stared back at my pastor and could feel pangs of panic mobilizing in my stomach. I
wondered if he could tell. He had always had an uncanny ability to see and know people in their struggle. I didn’t want him to see my struggle with shame then.

I hadn’t decided yet what I wanted to do about my grandmother. Of all the people in my
family, my Wisler Mennonite grandmother was the most nonchalant about my appearance and of my choice to pursue a PhD. Years ago, my mother had told me that when she was a teenager, she and my aunts were pinpointed as the “rebellious Horst girls.” My grandmother had a 9th grade education, the most of any of my grandparents which wasn’t hard given one set was raised Amish and the other set was Wisler Mennonite. She had been adamant that my mother and my aunts would graduate high school which resulted in their bishop making it his mission to do an extended series about women’s roles. He had preached Sunday after Sunday about how girls should drop out of school so that they could learn their wifely duties (aka all housework) in a home environment instead. Ultimately, her persistence won out and the bishop was forced to bend to her stubborn, supposedly ungodly stance.

“She hasn’t passed yet, but she has been in Hospice for several days now.”
“I will be praying for you and your family.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled. I hurried away from him, blinking into the subtle coolness of
the late-September wind. The pangs in my stomach fermented into its familiar contents, shame. I had been feeling more of it the last few years when I came home and my usual coping skills of ignoring the feeling, thanks to my Amish/Mennonite roots of stoicism, couldn’t quell it. I always told my patients “Emotions are just the bodies way of giving you information,” to help them embrace their emotions. But being a therapist at times felt different than experiencing one’s own humanness.

What would my grandma have said to me? I remembered a few years ago when I had
visited her during Christmas, looking like a normal, “decently good” Mennonite woman with
long hair, no tattoos, and no piercings. The next time I visited her was in June for her 92nd
birthday. I had arrived, feeling the gnarled knots of shame spreading in my stomach. Usually, my grandmother’s home was the most tranquil place in the world to me. Our family orchard contained grapevines planted by my great-great-grandparents and apple trees over 100-years-old who stooped in the wind, but still managed to stand straight on the still days, just like my grandmother. As I entered the back porch door, my stomach somersaulted again. I was not aware that the entirety of my Wisler Mennonite extended family would be there. All the women wore their hair pulled back into semi-transparent bonnets and mild floral print dresses that covered their elbow and shot down to their ankles. I felt alien.

And just at that moment, my grandmother sprung up with the biggest smile on her face and tried her best to walk towards me to hug me. My grandmother did not care that I had shaved half my head, had a nose ring, and wore a “cats against catcalls” tank top. She liked me for me.

By the time that I had reached the store, my mother was already walking out with a few
grocery items.
“Was that Beau?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s good. I’m glad you saw him.”
My mom and I settled in for the ride, and I fell into my customary silence as my mother
entertained me with the latest town news punctuated by the occasional pothole. Google maps indicated that we had ten more minutes left, and my heart pounded the closer we got to the building.

“Mom, tell me again about when grandma wanted you all to go to high school, but the
bishop didn’t want you to.”
My mother repeated the story, adding a bit about how she also wanted to leave the church
because she wanted to watch basketball games, but wasn’t allowed to because the men were “half-naked.” I half-heartedly chuckled at the comment. I breathed in, reminding myself that my grandmother was different. She went against church rules too. Just in other ways.

We walked into the room where my grandma lay with her hair back in her customary
bonnet and her blue pastel dress on. My mother and I talked to her, and I told her about my
studies, choking back lumps in my throat. At times we just listened to the hymns playing on the TV station. It felt weird that my grandmother would spend the last of her days listening to a TV, a device her church had objected to for her entire life. After a bit, my mother told me that we should head out to meet my brothers for supper. She started for the door, and I felt my body stiffen. This might be my last chance.
“Can you give me one moment?” I asked turning to my mother.
“Sure.”
I stared at my grandmother’s 97-year-old face, her wrinkles shaping her face into the map
that always pointed me back home.

“Hi, grandma, I’m gay.”

I know that she most likely was not conscious of her surroundings. The massive stroke
she had days before rendered her immobile, mute, and unseeing, making that
impossible. But I swear I saw her smile and felt her hand give a small squeeze.

Second Place 2023

Trans Body Divined

Timberlyn Weber, Collections Management Tech, Scott Memorial Library

In which god is a matriarch who wears blue eye shadow and color coordinated clothes
In which god is a stoic man whose tanned and tired arms you only see in the dying light
In which god is a mother who married a bad man and left you behind
In which god is a power to be passed down, to be held in every body—yours but never mine
And in god-fearing country, sprang from the soil divine
An unholy body, they said—mine—the god-killing kind.

//

Herein lie prostrate on the floor, hold out piece after piece of yourself as if to say:
Eat of me and be holy
Herein lie a haughty god gorged on your penance, as if to say:
Nothing less than all will ever be enough
Herein lie an empty husk, only left to say:
What of me when I have nothing left?

//

In which you, yourself, build the Tower of Babel, which is to find:
Herein lie the language you needed but never knew you could speak
In which you, yourself, actively resist becoming a pilar of salt, which is to find:
Herein lie the strength you needed to accept there was no going back
In which you, yourself, dismantled the altars of a false god, which is to find:
Herein lie the questioning—blasphemy, the act; You—the god-killing kind

//

Go and don’t come back: You have always been divine

Third Place 2023

a tapestry of thoughts

Alex Hernandez, Resident Physician in Pediatrics at Nemours Hospital for Children

dirt-drenched woven fabric
unraveling,
by the thread.
i’d rolled up my sleeves a thousand times,
and,
it clings to my skin with the magnitude of lifetimes.

for some reason, I lay here with ghosts,
tasked with god’s work, no one else knows.
plastic spade in my pocket,
here I stand,
wearing shame around my chest, unseen,
like a forever locket.

they say the grass is green where you water it,
but what if this world doesn’t nurture my crops
so empty, no grass grows at all?

no matter how much water pours
from my hands or onto this earth,
no matter what I will,
or what I offer,
a sacrifice,
a plea,
a prayer,
a thought
into this vast expanse,
emptiness is returned to me.

i’m left to wonder,
if all these thoughts are destined
to be silenced like me.
inside a cage, unseen,
with vermin and warfare,
and battles I was never prepared for.

they say the grass is green where you water it,
and yet,
no sunflowers,
no marigolds,
no violets,
no roses...
not even weeds grow here,

because this dirt’s minerals
dried up generations ago,
along with those beloved hands,
catching pueblos in ponce.

and yet still I grip this plastic spade,
that can barely cut through an inch of dirt.
and still, I poke and prod.

i become the legacy of absent nutrients,
and every day,
i pray for rain.

they say the grass is green where you water it,
from behind their gates and fences,
plucking white hydrangeas
from plantations in their backyards,
taunting my crooked spade.

all I need is to find a root,
because I’ll grow a whole forest,
i swear.

they say the grass is green where you water it,
and yet, every seed I plant decays,
no flower in my presence
even gets the chance to wither away.

so, I sit here on this plot, misguided,
their fences get taller, and mine, so silent.
my identity and vulnerability, an entrée
to white teeth grins, and judgment
likened with sin.

i’ve noticed that lately,
i stare too longingly at their wicked fences.
i desire to knock at their door,
and give up on my reflection,
for merely the chance to embrace the acceptance of
jasmine thorns, which once gripped,
cause my hands to bleed like a forgotten memoir.

despite this, i persist,
until one day, revelation blooms inside me,
and I realize something enlightening
that triumphs over fences and fangs,
and my illusion begins to fade.

i discover abundance, purely,
swirling all around me.

the root I needed to find
was never lost, because,
i am the root,

and the root of a snake plant
grows in me,
waiting desperately
to be set free.

so, i press my dry cracked palms
seeping maroon,
against the earth of my ancestors,
the reaper’s dirt,
reincarnating lives gone too soon,
and allow the glory of a thousand dracaenas
to spiral, swirl, and sprout all around me,

giving reprise to my never-ending drought
evolving from unseen suffering
and the backbone of countless bulletproof vests.

i see kaleidoscopes and rainbows,
and feel the strength of
every hand that ever lifted me up,
when I was weak.

and now, I realize just how lucky I am
to have woven a tapestry
from only the thoughts inside my head
with the trail of yarn
you buried deep inside of me
all those years ago

Third Place 2023

Life Cycle of the Blastophaga psenes, or An Awakened Child

Malachi Lily, Patient, Jefferson Pride Program

Here a new testament:

The fig tree.
The one in our playground. It was stout and ugly
I found it unnerving for its unchecked curving branches–its false fruit.
An inflorescence: a cluster of many flowers and seeds ingrown within a bulbous stem.
Its fat leaves slapped your cheeks if you passed too close.
The tree and I shared the opinion that children are raised to be unhelpful,
shitting in porcelain vases, straining and sweating, instead of planting the fig’s
fertilized seeds in the earth’s dark.
We were taught–Don’t make a sound. Don’t disturb the ground.
The tree warned us. Adults whispered about us. Made my ears itch
and yours too,
Harmony May Grub.

You were blonde and a fortunate one.
You held a whole fruit for yourself. I watched as you decided not to eat
but crawl into the bushes with me to let ants creep over your toes and up your capris.
You had grass in your teeth, so I knew how you beat long-limbed big kids for an entire
fig plump. I didn’t want to ask and didn’t have to
because one side of the fig was caving in. I winced.

You had picked it off the ground.
You dug your dirt-caked thumb into the soft vessel
to split and share the bulb. It squelched and, for a moment, sighed as you tore it.
Said: For you, and dropped it in my lap.
When I saw the insides, I knew it was wrong.
It’s not fruit, it’s carnivore. Flesh begetting flesh.
The insides a chewed, bleeding cheek, the moist skin shredded and pooling
in its own fluids.
Imbedded in the soggy wall, a preserved wasp, half consumed by the fig, half twitching.
I got sick and
ran away.

You and I got locked in the art classroom bathroom. We were washing our hands
and open-mouth kissing at the same time, lips barely touching.
We didn’t know how grown-ups made open mouths close in on each other.
The fire alarm pierced. We pulled apart. Panicked.
Our soapy hands couldn’t turn the knob or think to dry themselves.
We banged on the door. With each pound, I knew this must be what it feels
like to be a fig wasp.

Here a superb example of coevolution or savage dependency:

The fig’s ostiole is so tight that the queen wasp often loses an antennae or wing
wriggling through. When her eggs hatch, the girls will scrape pollen

and the boys will dig, dig, dig to tunnel their pregnant sisters out of the fig.
I wanted to tunnel my Harmony Grub out of the bathroom into the sun
the mud instead of burning alive. The art teacher found us, bewildered by our fear
and sticky, wet mouths.
It was only a drill.

The wingless males stay behind to be at once the food and at once the divine,
like laying in your top bunk with no underwear under our skirts, just
our hands bent as cameras taking pictures up and up each other’s thighs.
You always let me be the boy.
We never questioned why things are the way they are.
This is where I did my duty and stayed behind to jellify.
This is where I accepted to be
swollen.

Here a newly discovered species!

A year later Adults made me move away from you, but this distance could not starve me
and the church could not pluck my roots
that were growing me into the tree’s mutagenic offspring.
Into the one who warned me of sanitized civilization
and that pollination is not reserved for butterflies and bees.

Adults expected a beautiful girl who was like a flower, cracked wide in form

but my flowers curl inward as a synconium, as a belly heavy
with forced intergenerational deceit.
I won’t be a liar for them, you, or me.
Split me open and you will find numerous tiny fruits and truths each with tiny seeds
each knowing what the tree slapped into us
and it will set my species apart as self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you ask, I’ll tell, and the broken curse will cause
animals and humans alike to clamber for my fruit
only to swallow me, too, as a significant protein
that will never know if Harmony and I share these core memories.

Teeth and gastro-acids grind my wings, expose my seeds
to facilitate my bloom into knowing:
I’m not fruit. I’m carnivore
because I prayed this word to you: want.
I rot and grow in want as an endangered lifecycle stubborn in generosity.
I will always become fruit for those who wish to disturb–make sound.
One bite and I will set their faces alight.
I’ll coat their insides

a bloody color.