To the Girl Who Moved South
Think of me every day
Tell those southerners about me
Tell them how they’re breaking me down
bit by bit
piece by piece
Tell them about the folk up here
about how we live
about our struggle, hands chilled and souls on fire
Tell them about the workers and the pit
the half-year’s darkness, the drink that ensnares
Tell them we sometimes have no strength to spare
when colonialism makes good neighbors rare
Tell them about the plagues of midges
the chilly summers
the health care gaps
Then when they ask why you want to return
Tell them about the rays of the midnight sun
the murmur of the waters
the shimmer of the northern lights
Tell of the coffee that’s always simmering
the fire that’s always crackling
the smell of fresh baking
Nan’s Finnish lilt and ciggies, part of childhood
Tell of the fire that never fades
in activists, workers, retirees
Sing my songs, the ones we all know up here
Show me to those southerners
Tell them about all the tongues that are mine
all the nature that’s mine
and say:
if I’m not the greatest wonder they’ve ever seen
Then they have no business here
for my forests, ore, and water aren’t theirs to take
In the Sticks
There’s so many of us
Though they call us a minority
Queers from the sticks
Seldom in the same place, scattered through the north country
From Kiruna to Lannavaara to Boden, from Jörn up to Karesuando and down to Bygdeå
Nowhere’s too far for us
We spend hundreds of hours on the bus to meet up
None of us can really afford a ticket
And the fares rise with each mountain-bound tourist
But
We’ve worked out our own system
Learned how to get a discreet free ride
We’re queers
From the sticks
Torn between our families in the north and our loves in the south
Bleeding for our rights
Our opportunities
Our freedoms
There’s so many of us
Though they call us a minority
Queers from the sticks
We’ve learned to nurture relationships over a thousand miles
Through phone sex and love letters
And it’s so damn hard to live here sometimes, though we don’t say as much to others
but whisper it to each other between panic attacks and Gällivare’s mental health clinic
Sometimes we wish we lived in Stockholm
But what would happen to all the wood, berries, forests?
What of the next generation?
And the next?
If we don’t pass on what we know?
We’re determined to stay
There’s so many of us
Though they call us a minority
Queers from the sticks
And there’s more of us with each year that passes
“Brev till hon som flyttade” and “Glesbygden” © Rönn-Lisa Zakrisson. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2022 by Fiona Graham. All rights reserved.
