POEM: Between Our Departures

Between Our Departures

I don't know if they still hold Pennsic.

Maybe the city finally folded itself

into the long green hill, or the flat lands—

the roads surrendered to rain,

the banners sad, forgot the names

we stitched into them by lantern light.

Maybe the field has grown ordinary,

covered itself in clover and quiet,

its stillness as though thousands of us

had never raised a kingdom there.

But every August,

something in me still hears us.

The bright breaths of tiki torches.

A flute wandering through canvas walls.

The deep-throated tombek beneath my hands,

its goatskin trembling like my second heart.

The finger cymbals sang at my wrists.

An old gypsy taught me—

though he was no gypsy at all,

only Alex beneath a hundred stories,

grinning through woodsmoke

and moonlight.

And Rosanna,

that beautiful serpent,

sliding through the dancers

like a spell cast from another century.

Someone laughed in the dark.

I cannot remember their face,

only that they pressed me a cup of mead,

passed me a sweet green smoke,

and braided a bell into my hair.

First there was Wolf Camp.

Then the Tuchux—

I paid the barbarians passage

with the pale coin of my breast.

Then Esmeralda,

and twenty drummers in a circle,

and me among them,

playing until pain became bliss

and rhythm turned to ecstasy.

By day the armies marched.

Men vanished inside shining plate armor,

becoming iron saints beneath the sun.

The East fought the Midrealm

for the glory of Pittsburgh,

which seemed at the time

as noble a prize as Troy.

And afterward—

after the bruises,

the dust,

the heat—

Pop-tarts,

and a red-roasted pig turned slow on the spit

while darkness gathered in the trees.

We danced and drank until delirium found us.

We danced until the stars burned out.

Until sweat and torchlight

burned us back to body.

Until every path through the woods

opened into another fire,

another camp,

another welcome,

another song.

Every farewell already contained

the seed of a return.

We were always leaving Pennsic.

Even while we were there,

we were already mourning it,

already promising one another

next summer,

next summer,

next summer.

And still we returned.

Year after year,

building a kingdom from rope,

canvas, woodsmoke, and stubbornness.

Now the years themselves

have become the campground.

Whole neighborhoods of memory

have gone to seed beneath the pines.

I walked them once at dusk,

too many years ago—

I remember the gate.

A song.

A glimpse of someone impossibly beautiful

turning away the way beautiful things do—

without any way to explain it.

No—

they must still hold Pennsic.

Because some nights

I hear it singing and dancing

just beyond the edge of sleep.

The drums begin first.

Then the strings.

Then distant laughter through the trees.

And a voice I almost recognize

calls softly from the dark:

Rise, Marni.

We've been waiting.

Come away, come away.

Marni Fraser

0603.2026

Self-Portrait
Marni Fraser
June 4, 2026