My mother sewed sheets of muslin 
into miniature pockets, poured in 
lavender beads, catnip, moonstone 
chips, calling them sachets. Like spell 
bags, she tucked them between 
sweaters to ward off moths, or slipped 
them within my pillowcase so I’d awaken 
from a bad dream and shift the dream’s 
setting from a dark parking garage 
to a lavender slope steeping beneath 
midsummer’s heat. Rows of amethyst 
buds glowed, winged with periwinkle 
petals flowing from sea green 
stems. Purring moths and delicate 
bees stirred the high notes of blooms 
named for Victorian ladies—Ana, Luisa, 
Lady Beatrix—into low notes 
of mint, earth, eucalyptus. It took me years 
to understand lavender’s enchantments, 
how to breathe its cool fragrance into my mind’s 
furnace, infusing it with calm memories, 
as when I swam beyond safety in the ocean, 
without worry, my mother wading the 
shallows, calling me to shore. 

Lavender (watercolor, 2025) copyrighted © by Susan Tekulve

Susan Tekulve’s

newest book is Bodies of Light (Serving House Books, 2024), her first full-length collection of poetry, which was included on the CLMP’s International Women’s History Month 2025 booklist (28 February 2025). She is also the author of Second Shift: Essays (Del Sol Press); and In the Garden of Stone (Hub City Press), winner of the South Carolina Novel Prize and a Gold IPPY Award. And she has two short-story collections published: Savage Pilgrims (Serving House Books) and My Mother’s War Stories (Winnow Press), the latter of which received the 2004 Winnow Press fiction prize. Her web chapbook, Wash Day, appears in the Web Del Sol International Chapbook Series.

Her poems, essays, and stories have appeared in journals such as The Comstock Review, Denver Quarterly, The Georgia Review, Italian Americana, The Louisville Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Letters, Puerto del Sol, and Shenandoah. Ms. Tekulve has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She teaches in the BFA and MFA writing programs at Converse University.

Author’s website: https://susantekulve.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Hummingbird, a poem by Susan Tekulve in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 16, 1 January 2023); nominated by MacQ in September 2023 for Best of the Net 2024

⚡ Six Artworks by Ms. Tekulve in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022)

⚡ Socks, a poem by Ms. Tekulve in MacQ (Issue 14, August 2022); nominated in early 2023 for The Pushcart Prize XLVIII by Pushcart’s board of contributing editors

⚡ White Blossoms, a photo essay by Ms. Tekulve in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Fall 2019), selections from which were printed in Earth Hymn (Volume 6 of the KYSO Flash Anthology, 2019)