For A Little While

By Amy Laurens

Ranging from the quiet ache of mundane drudgery to the deep, searing pain of injustice and world tragedies, this collection of poems by Amy Laurens offer quiet hope for the world-weary soul.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inkprint Press
• Release date: Jul 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386934974

Amy Laurens

AMY LAURENS is an Australian author of fantasy fiction for all ages. Her story Bones Of The Sea, about creepy carnivorous mist and bone curses, won the 2021 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novella. Amy has also written the award-winning portal-fantasy Sanctuary series about Edge, a 13-year-old girl forced to move to a small country town because of witness protection (the first book is Where Shadows Rise), the humorous fantasy Kaditeos series, following newly graduated Evil Overlord Mercury as she attempts to acquire a castle, the young adult series Storm Foxes, about love and magic and family in small town Australia, and a whole host of non-fiction, both for writers AND for people who don’t live with constant voices in their heads. Other interesting details? Let’s see. Amy lives with her husband and two kids in suburban Canberra. She used to be a high-school English teacher, and she was once chewed on by a lion. (The two are unrelated. It was her right thumb.) Amy loves chocolate but her body despises it; she has a vegetable garden that mostly thrives on neglect; and owns enough books to be considered a library. Of course. Oh, and she also makes rather fancy cakes in her spare time. She’s on all the usual social media channels as @ByAmyLaurens, but you’ve got the best chance of actually getting a response on Instagram or the contact form on her website. <3

Book preview

In The Evening, Where The Deserts End

In the evening, when my heart

is as full as the sky is of stars,

then I will go out to the dunes of

sand that stretch endlessly to the sea, and

there I will wait.

In the sparkling

starlight of the night, I will wait

for you,

and when you come we will leap

hand in hand

down slopes that fall away under our feet until

we can fly,

and together we will soar

through the night like bats,

great, leathery wings of belief

pinning us to the sky.

We will dip and twist and glide and turn, and

when we have flown high enough, your hand clenched

tightly in mine like we are locked together eternally,

we will reach the stars.

––––––––

The dunes will stretch below like a sea,

waves of sand frozen in place only

by time and perspective, and

we will see that the boundaries of our desert

are finite;

that the barrenness of our minds comes to

an end;

and that outside it all is fertile.

Together

we will swoop back to the ground and remember

what we have seen from our vantage

point of the stars: we will walk onwards

with steps that achingly climb, only to slip

back halfway to where they came from, and

our muscles will burn

as we scale the heights of our

disappointments

—but we will not forget.

We have been to the stars,

and they have shown us:

the desert too will

end.

One day, we will find the fence, and scale it.

No One Ever Said

No one ever said:

You must love only perfect things.

So when I tell you,

I love my body.

I’m not claiming perfection,

or delusion,

or illusion.

It’s unfit, like a jellyfish with bones;

it’s neglected, a latch-key kid in its own skin;

it’s flabs-not-abs,

scars-not-spas,

pores-not-cores.

––––––––

You are telekinetic.

Did you know that?

(Telekinesis is moving things

purely by the power of thought;

how else do you move your fingers

when you type?)

––––––––

My body walks

my body runs

my body hugs and