E.E. Cummings Prize Finalist, selected by Chard deNiord
Julia H. Fonte lives on the edge of Vermont woods. When not writing she preserves wildflowers in three-dimensional form; grows and dries organic herbs; and interacts (from their preferred distance) with a family of wild ravens. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Steam Ticket, Touchstone, The Mountain Troubadour, Northern New England Review, The Braided Way, HEART, The Milk House, Stone Poetry Quarterly and Verse-Virtual. One of her poems was a finalist in the 2025 Vermont Writer’s Prize. Two were selected as Honorable Mentions in the 2025 HEART Poetry Award and the 2025 Touchstone Ekphrastic Poetry Contest. juliahfonte.com
A pea deprived a princess of sleep
After Hans Christian Andersen's
"The Princess and the Pea,” 1835
Another rolled around in my mind
like a marble lost within a maze,
its knocking keeping me awake
after my mother said, “Don’t worry,
they say it’s tiny, the size of a pea.”
Not a drop spilled from her coffee
eyes when she learned her lungs were
no longer equal, her future a question.
Stoic—for me, though darkness must
have soaked her pillow as it did mine…
Brow relaxed, her eyes shined with
gratitude for the oncologist who kept
his promise. No pain. And still,
the pea pursued my slumberless hours
until a star slipped from the blackest
night into a chamber of my heart.