He said he was like Aragorn—
which simplifies things.
At once there is a kingdom,
a lineage,
a future postponed for noble reasons,
and a woman somewhere
patient enough to make it meaningful.
And since patience,
then waiting,
and since waiting,
then interpretation—
small pauses examined like artifacts,
silences catalogued,
every delay entered into evidence
as proof of depth.
No throne required.
No witnesses.
No public act of choosing.
The crown exists in theory,
which is lighter to carry.
Not just the scale, it’s also the convenience—
a man may remain unfinished indefinitely,
provided the story explains him.
A man may divide his life into careful sections,
call it burden,
call it timing,
call it the long road.
The road lengthens nicely
when no one insists on arrival.
And I—
placed somewhere along this route,
not quite a destination,
more like a well-lit clearing—
am asked, without being asked,
to understand.
To recognize greatness in restraint,
to admire the discipline of postponement,
to hold the shape of a future
that keeps adjusting itself.
Meanwhile, in less mythic settings,
kings tend to announce themselves,
love tends to appear in daylight,
and decisions, when they happen,
have dates.
Still—
it is a beautiful story.
The hidden heir.
The necessary delay.
The almost.
So what can one say
about men who borrow epics—
the historians of themselves,
the quiet editors of consequence—
if anything fits,
it is this:
that in the retelling,
with enough weather,
enough distance,
enough carefully chosen words—
even hesitation
can be mistaken
for destiny.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Tag: Poem
On Writing, Voice, and Iris Lennox
In January 2023, I made a New Year’s resolution to write more poetry. For once, I actually followed through. I wrote quite a bit that year, but most of it was just okay.
What I started to notice was that all of it sounded like me, but not in that beautifully cohesive way where you can tell a piece is by Emily Dickinson or Wisława Szymborska. There was something a little circular about it.
So the following year, I started taking poetry classes and workshops with real, working poets.
I’m not sure if I’ve gotten better, but I do know this: listening to other students’ and poets’ work in the room changed everything.
I started thinking thoughts I hadn’t thought before and feeling things I didn’t expect to feel again. Just from listening to people write about ordinary moments. The kind that light you up, or break your heart, or make you want to live, but on fire.
Life is so rich and dynamic, and also boring and mundane. And you can write about all of it.
So, I created a pen name: Iris Lennox.
This summer, I’ll be publishing a book of poetry under that name. It felt like the right time to start sharing some of that work and to give that voice a little more room to grow.
I also created a website for it:
I’ll be sharing poems and short pieces there as I continue developing this side of my writing.
❤️,
Jill
Whisper the Passing Time
Memory sifted through their hands
Like water
Or like sand—
The kind of sand that lays flat
On desert ground
And all around the blistered feet
Of those who stand and watch the sun
With faces red
And cracking under heat
Filtered through dust—
Or like water.
Like water
In trickles
Between fingers pruning with excess
Trying to keep it there
Sickeningly aware
Of the weakness in the spaces
Between their fingers
And their hands—
Their memories fell right through
Splashed around their ankles
In a shallow pool
Reflecting upward
Not what was held
But what remained.
Recollections darkened
Not gone—
But changed
Into purples and blues
Certain as midnight
Uncertain as morning.
The light from those days
Did not disappear
It bent
Casting shadows
From the figures they had formed
In the mind—
Standing still
Even as everything else moved.
Not that they lied,
They simply could not see
That the laughter of then
Would return differently
That what once rang out
Clear and effortless
Would come back softened
Carrying weight
They had not yet learned to name.
They heard the voices
Of those they knew
From long ago days
When laughter was simple
Easy as something rolling
Downward
Without resistance—
Smooth in the hand
Bright in the light
Held up and turned
Until color revealed itself
And then slipped away again.
Recollections continued
Not fixed
Not held—
But moving
Across the surface of them
As water does
As sand does
Shifting
Settling
Lifting
And falling
Without asking permission.
Their memories were old
But inside them
Something remained
Not unchanged—
But present.
A trace
A tone
A warmth
That did not belong
Only to the past
But to the shape
Of what they had become.
Memory sifted through their hands
And still
Something stayed—
Not in the grasp
But in the holding
They could no longer see.
Recollections whispered
The passing time—
Not hurried
Not still—
Simple as a falling grain
Intricate as the path it takes.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: A Modest Proposal for the Internet Age
There is a version of you
already walking around out there.
She has good lighting.
He is a series of clean paragraphs.
They speak in sentences that arrive
fully dressed.
No one interrupts them.
No one misquotes them.
No one catches the moment
before the thought lands.
They do not hesitate.
They do not circle back.
They do not say,
“Wait, that’s not what I meant.”
This version of you
does not exist in your kitchen
or your car
or the quiet ten minutes
before sleep.
Still, she is convincing.
She has been liked.
Shared.
Saved for later
by people who will not remember
where they found her.
Meanwhile,
you forget what you were saying
mid-sentence.
You start projects you never return to.
You carry conversations in your body
long after they’ve ended.
You revise yourself
in the shower.
You win arguments
three days late.
There is no algorithm for that.
No one clicks
on the unfinished version.
No one bookmarks
the moment you changed your mind
and did not announce it.
And yet,
this is the only place
anything real has ever happened.
Not in the caption,
but in the pause before it.
Not in the post,
but in the hour you spent
deciding whether to speak at all.
The Internet will continue
to assemble you
from fragments.
A sentence here.
A photograph there.
A tone someone will misunderstand
and carry with them
as if it were complete.
You will be summarized
by people who have never
heard your voice in a room.
You will be known
in ways that are technically accurate
and entirely untrue.
This is not a problem
to be solved.
It is a condition.
So—
wash your cup.
answer the email you’ve been avoiding.
tell the truth
in the next small conversation
that asks it of you.
Let your life become
slightly more aligned
with the person
who appears so effortlessly
on a screen.
Not perfectly.
Not all at once.
Just enough
that if someone were to meet you
without context,
without history,
without the archive—
they would recognize you.
And if they didn’t,
you would not feel the need
to explain.
Now,
go and become the person
you want the Internet to think you are.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Iris Lennox
This one did not arrive gently.
The edges remember something—
a pressure,
a folding back,
as if each petal had to argue
for its place in the light.
Nothing about it is smooth.
The ruffles hold.
The color deepens where it was once hidden.
Even the softness has weight to it.
You could say it opened.
But that would miss
what it endured to become open.
There are days
the sky lowers itself without warning,
and everything living is asked
to stay.
No explanation is offered.
No promise of outcome.
Just weather.
Still, something in the root
keeps drawing what it can.
Still, something in the stem
lifts what it has been given.
And when it is finally visible—
the pale, steady unfolding—
no one sees the storms.
Only the shape they left behind.
Only the quiet fact
that it did not close again.
Only the way it stands
as if the breaking of it
was never the end.
@Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: Algorithms of Fathers and Sons (And Daughters, Too)
There is a jukebox in the corner
Where saddle shoes used to tread
Under skirts and socks with lace
Splattered with drippings from
Chocolate malts and shakes,
Where pearls would bounce
And roll across the floor.
Tile black and white—
I know it sounds trite
Like paisley on a bow tie
But patterns and bow ties
Bring order to the madness—
Also hamburgers, French fries
Ponytails and Snake Eyes.
He came to this place
Where the music was stuck—
Records displaying
Yellowed faces
Songs replaying
Grooves worn low
Weary, dull and much too slow.
Going backward
Isn’t really his thing
But there came a day
When his soul melted
Slipped through his lungs
Leaked and oozed
Puddled around the soles of his shoes.
Forward
No longer
Was an option for him—
What was he supposed to do?
Walk away, a shell of a man
Empty but for the wind
Whistling through?
He stood
Until noon traveled around him
Draped over the moon
Darkness descended,
Then fell his soul
Standing stuck
He heard the rattling of a rancid truck.
“Move aside,”
Said a man
Who smelled like Linus looks
Plus the tan lines of a garbage man,
“You’re in my way,
and what is this filth
at your feet?”
Accustomed to the dross
Of the city streets
With fetid hands the garbage man
Began to lift the spilt soul
Which was running into the ditch but,
“Wait!,”
Cried the empty man.
“That is not junk
though it lacks the glow
of gold
please leave it here
with me
it is all I have
if the truth is told.”
“All you have?”
Laughed the man
With the smell of human waste
On his hands,
“Then pick it up.”
Then came the second truth,
“I can’t.”
“I need your help,”
The wind spun around his tongue
Then played the space
Between his ribs
And his lungs
Like a concerto for weakening
Flesh and bone.
“Damn it all,”
The collector of trash replied
As he bent at the waist
To clean up the spill
That rolled down the hill
Before it crusted, caked and dried
Under the heat of the sun.
“I’ll put it in your pocket
now move along
get something to eat
there is a diner
across the street
that serves the lost
and the weak.”
And so, this is how he came
To the place echoing with the past—
The jukebox, the pearls
Where nothing was meant to last—
Fate brought him low
Then brought him here
To face the time where it all began
(Thanks to the garbage man).
“I don’t understand,”
He thought to himself
Then said it out loud
As his eyes rolled around
Searching for some logic
He could grip
Or some algorithm
He could apply to the script.
And then
Entered a ghost
With matted hair
On the sides of his head
Coming out of his ears,
A limp in his knee and
Teeth glowing green.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,”
Said the empty man
“Tough shit,”
Said the apparition
Blunt in his delivery and
Over dramatic
In his long flowing livery.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
Coughed the ghost
To which the live one replied,
“Do you always start with small talk?
I don’t mean to gawk but
your presence and general
demeanor are starting to piss me off.”
“You are here for a reason
and so am I
we need to get some things straight
before it’s too late
for you.
As you can see
it’s already too late for me.”
The beginning and the end
Sounded like a riddle
But somewhere in the middle
The living man
Recognized the voice,
“Dad?”
He squinted and then stuttered.
“No shit,”
Said the ghost and then
Once more,
“Do you have a cigarette?”
The living man
Almost fell to the floor
“Here, one of my last four.”
They sat in a booth,
The jukebox began to croon
They ordered hotdogs with ketchup
Had no forks
Cut their food with a spoon,
“I don’t mean to pry
but why have you come?”
“I met her here in 1952
we were both too young
to know what to do
so we loved and had fun
and then she had you
I thought of staying
but I couldn’t follow through.”
They sipped coke through a straw
To fill the long pause,
“Again, I wonder
why are you here?”
The ice clinked
In the ghost’s tall curvy glass,
“I know I was an ass
I feel kind of bad
I heard you needed me there
but I didn’t know—
shit—
it was hard to stay away
and hard to stay
I wanted to say . . .”
A pause.
And a tightening of the throat
Both the man and the ghost
Turned and squirmed,
“But why today?”
Asked the living son
Who wanted to run but chose to stay.
“Before I go to my final space
I was given the gift
once more
to see your face
and written there
I saw your hopelessness—
it rendered my journey motionless.”
“Is that when my soul
dripped all the way out?”
The ghost whispered back,
“That wasn’t your soul
it was fear and self-doubt
and I couldn’t help but
notice my name
on the puss that spilled out
so I used my airy powers
to stop your feet
with the little time I have left
I wanted to meet
in case my song repeats
after I’m gone.”
The air was still
Atmosphere heavy
Like before a storm
The ground felt shaky
And covered with worms
Snakes, anteaters and obese germs.
“I took a bit of you
and left too much of me
dropped you in a hole
of anonymity
no sure identity
as is given by a dad
and when you reached for me
your hand collapsed
empty
confused
your confidence slid—
but hear me now:
you are the best thing
I ever did.”
The living man
Felt a peace begin to grow
In a place he did not know
Existed before today
Above his ribs, above his lungs
Where scabs were hung
Replaced with Band-Aids.
“I didn’t know
and I have a lot of questions
but I feel your time is fleeting
so I will ask only one
why wait
so late
to have this meeting?”
“Time is made of seconds and of hours
each tick devours each tock
as we ignore the face of the clock
take for granted the breath
and selfishly hold the seasons
in vaults of the mind we keep locked
for prideful reasons.
But I tell you,
my son,
you are not
hopeless
I see your shine
and as long as you are living
there is still
time
so live
and be the you that is
free
of the weight of me
and my stupidity,
I am sorry.”
Then the ghost
He didn’t believe in
Vanished
To whence he came
But left a ray of something
Maybe hope
And the jukebox continued to play.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026 (updated)
Poem: Lucy, After
History prefers its geniuses solemn.
Preferably male.
Preferably seated.
Preferably holding a cigar—
not a cigarello
between long red fingernails.
Instead—
a woman with hair like an emergency flare.
Tell me:
who approved that color?
Which committee of grey
signed off on scarlet?
She slips on grapes.
The floor does not conspire.
Gravity does what gravity has always done.
The miracle is timing.
A conveyor belt advances chocolates
toward frenzy.
She does not manage the machinery.
She collaborates with it.
Is this not a form of authorship?
To be devoured publicly
and still shape the rhythm?
Another spoonful.
The vowels lose confidence.
A nation repeats the error
faithfully.
Behind the laughter—
what?
A pen moving.
A contract reconsidered.
A chair dragged two inches closer to the head of the table.
Two inches is nothing.
Two inches is history.
The cigars call her difficult.
Smoke prefers obedience.
Fire prefers oxygen.
Which one endures?
The camera adored her.
Which is to say
it surrendered.
Or did she surrender first—
learning its angles,
its appetite,
the exact duration of a silence
before an audience inhales?
Meanwhile, another actress waits
in a hallway that smells faintly of carpet glue
and compromise.
How long has she been there?
Since childhood?
Since the first “maybe next time”?
Lucy opens the door.
The actress who had trimmed her ambition
to fit inside the cigars’ shadows
discovers a window.
Somewhere, years later,
a woman walks into a room
and does not think to apologize.
How does permission travel?
Through blood?
Through rumor?
Through reruns?
The grapes are now wine.
The pratfall loops.
The Martian is still loitering
on the windowsill.
Was she a clown?
An executive?
A wife staging chaos while drafting order?
Yes.
Is solemnity the only costume
genius may wear?
If so,
why did the room tilt
when she leaned?
She falls.
She rises.
The laughter echoes.
The chairs remain turned
toward hers.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: The Slow Burn of Sorrow
Sorrow rarely storms the gates.
It prefers a smaller entrance—
a match struck against porcelain,
that sulfurous whisper
before light takes shape.
The candle stands upright in its brass throat,
ivory, almost innocent,
its surface smooth as a held breath.
You light it for reasons that feel reasonable—
ambience, perhaps,
or the softness that forgives a room
its hard edges.
The flame gathers itself slowly,
a petal of fire opening and closing
with each exhale in the house.
It leans into drafts you cannot feel,
tilts its bright head
as though listening.
At first nothing changes.
The wax remains sculpted,
cool-boned and pale.
The wick, a slender spine,
holds its posture bravely.
But look closer.
There is a darkening at the tip—
a quiet charring,
the black bead forming
like a thought you would rather not finish.
It glows from within,
red as an ember hiding in its own ash.
The heat loosens the body of the candle.
Not all at once—
never with spectacle.
A thin gloss appears at the rim,
a tremor of liquidity.
Then a slow descent:
wax turning to shine,
shine turning to droplet,
droplet to a small translucent lake
cupping the flame.
You watch.
The surface quivers
whenever the flame inhales.
Tiny tides lap against the unmoving wall.
A fragrance of warmed paraffin
settles into the curtains,
into your sleeves,
into the open mouth of the room.
Minutes pass without declaring themselves.
There is no visible subtraction,
no chunk torn away.
The candle appears steadfast,
nearly identical
to the candle it was.
Yet the wick is shortening
in increments too modest
for pride.
Each second
takes a grain.
Each breath
a filament.
Sorrow proceeds this way.
It does not alter your reflection
all at once.
It warms you from the inside
until something structural
begins to soften.
You still answer the door.
You rinse the glass.
You fold the towel along its old creases.
The day goes on wearing its ordinary clothes.
Meanwhile—
inside the brass holder—
there is a geography forming:
ridges of cooled drips,
stalactites hardened mid-fall,
a white valley carved
around the dwindling core.
The flame continues its patient labor,
unaware of clocks.
It has only one task:
to be itself,
to consume what holds it upright.
From moment to moment
nothing seems different.
The room remains the room.
The table remains the table.
Your hands remain your hands.
And yet—
Hours have thinned the column.
The wick, once vertical,
bends inward,
a tired reed in shallow water.
The molten pool deepens.
The walls cave gently toward the center
as if listening for news.
You glance away.
You glance back.
Still, it burns.
You could swear
it will burn forever.
But eventually you notice
the brass plate shining through
where ivory once stood.
A shallow basin of cooled wax
holds the fossil of flame—
a curled black thread
leaning against its own exhaustion.
Sorrow leaves such evidence.
No crash.
No shattered pane.
Only the quiet arithmetic
of something becoming less
while appearing the same.
You cannot say when the candle
crossed from whole
to almost gone.
You only know
that at some unnoticed hour
the light you trusted
was busy
turning itself
into absence.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: Concerto for Springtime and Squirrel
Spring does not arrive in ribbons.
It comes with a throat full of weather.
The sky lowers itself
until rooftops seem to hold it up.
Rain begins without ceremony—
a rehearsal for drowning
that never quite succeeds.
On the oak’s blackened spine
a squirrel emerges,
fur slicked to its quick, astonished body.
It pauses as though the world
has just been repainted mid-sentence.
Green—
not the polite green of greeting cards,
but the kind wrung from the earth
by pressure.
Grass leans forward, fluorescent with rumor.
Moss burns along the stones.
Even the bark darkens into something
nearly blue.
The squirrel descends headfirst,
a punctuation mark with claws,
tail arched like a question
the storm declines to answer.
Water pearls along its whiskers.
It blinks, and the yard rearranges itself.
Every leaf appears newly sworn in.
Every puddle holds a duplicate sky
shivering with revision.
Somewhere thunder practices authority.
The squirrel does not applaud.
It runs—
a brief streak of umber against electric green—
then stops again,
as if suspecting
that sight itself has molted.
What has changed?
The tree remains a tree.
The fence, a fence.
Yet color has stepped forward
and declared independence.
The storm insists.
The earth complies.
And the squirrel,
small curator of the soaked morning,
presses its paws into the vivid grass
as though testing
whether the brightness
will stain.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: Hall of Dreams
Within me
(one)
are many.
I stand before
a hall of dreams—
experiences arranged
like exhibits:
fair trades,
unbalanced ones,
who I was
and who I could not be.
I sit in the gallery
of my own imagining,
hovering above
movement and stagnation,
searching for pattern.
Logic keeps me safe
while everything mingles.
The projector clicks.
Slow at first.
Then steady—
like a train pulling memory
down its track.
Flicker.
Light.
I am lulled.
I understand the staying
and the leaving,
the cleaving,
the fall.
Shadows drip
between choice
and consequence—
wax from a tongue
that once burned
with lies.
Faces I trusted
tilt in the light.
Spies in their eyes.
Or was it mine
that misread?
I thought I knew.
At least
I trusted.
I replay.
Hover above.
Detached.
Objective.
What questions
should I have asked?
The kiss.
It split me.
Once one—
now two.
I built a case
for future disgrace,
called it truth,
called it depth,
called it destiny.
But you only tilted me—
then let me go.
What I named vast
was narrow.
What I called deep
was small.
The descent—
mine.
I wanted you
to speak truth.
Instead
I heard
what I wanted.
Weak.
Yes.
Deceived—
by myself.
Within me
(one)
are many—
but now
one fewer.
I lay the hall down.
Let the projector darken.
Offer illusion
back to silence.
And keep
what is real.
© Jill Szoo Wilson
Jill Szoo Wilson 