Poetry by Camille Lebel

Mark Spearman CC




Puberty with Cerebral Palsy

A sneeze sends you spiraling
into kitchen cabinets, the couch, 
the table’s sharp edge, unrelenting. 
Your resolve, straight and narrow.
Your spine, a curving question. 
Hormones have widened shoulders,
added muscles to arms and chest, 
but legs lag stubbornly behind.
Tendons and jaw clench tight
as you pick yourself up—again.
Your voice creaks like the third stair down,
hard-edged sarcasm casting shadows 
on the still boyish smile, struggling,
out of proportion. 

I tell you about the rowan tree,
growing into the Carrifran winds,
defiantly gnarled, surviving
what it means to stand alone. 
Stunted, clinging to the hillside,
it thrives, offers clustered rubies
to valley birds, rewilding banks
along the burn. I reach for magic:
the tree as sentinel, oracle, 
portal to the fairie realm.

You sigh.  
It’s a stupid fucking tree. ​




Camille Lebel, mother to seven, lives on a hobby farm outside of Memphis. She's Pushcart-nominated writer published in Literary Mama, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Inkwell, Last Leaves Literary Magazine, Writer’s Resist, and more. A later-in-life lesbian, she’s on Insta @clebelwords writing about child loss, religious deconstruction, divorce, and similar uplifting subjects.

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