SOMETIMES CITY v3e1: Nancy A. Henry - The Shadow Garden

Grace Bedwell: In Her Own Words

I am fifteen. I live in my lines. I am nothing special.

These are the words etched into the heart of SOMETIMES CITY, the poetic inner monologue of a young girl's coming-of-age story—Grace Bedwell. Through her evocative poetry, she speaks a raw, unfiltered truth about growing up, the confusions of adolescence, and the search for identity.

Smelling Like August: An Ode to Absence

In the powerful piece, "Because I Never Menstruate," Grace Bedwell confronts the often-taboo subject of a young girl's expected bodily functions—or rather, their absence—with fierce candor. We can smell the August she describes, thick with the scent of growing fields; we understand the longing in her metaphor. She is a "brown girl from the country," an image full of life, juxtaposed against the visceral void her words convey.

  because i never menstruate by grace bedwell you smell like august, you brown girl from the country from wheat & barley & oak trees & sticky tongues & organic blood, you've escaped my thighs again you've taken roads, instead from veins & poems, you have, instead, chosen to forget about me in September & August I have waited for you. I have waited for you while my back has been pressed against buildings, in May, I have waited 6 stories up with luke-warm diet sodas swishing & mixing with the saliva on the insides of my mouth my taste buds burning I have laid on my stomach forgetting you I have laid on my back curling my fingers around my hip bones wondering when you will live in my skin & around the edges & in the folds & between the creases again  

Bedwell's riveting plea to her estranged menstruation serves as a symbol for the broader narratives of anticipation and the transformations that mark the teenage years. It's a waiting game, an interlude that seems stagnant but is, in truth, the foundation of becoming.

Traveling Through Poetry: An Intimate Journey

In the vivid landscapes Grace Bedwell paints with her poetry, readers travel without moving. It's an introspection that carries us across emotional continents, through the plains of self-doubt, over mountains of solitude, and into valleys of quiet introspection. Here, travel does not require a passport or a suitcase, but an openness to journey within. Grace Bedwell's words act as signposts pointing towards the inner world, reminding us that sometimes the most profound journeys are those taken in the silences of our own minds.