Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets' daily poetry dispatch. Read "Spell for Unmasking" by Tea Gerbeza.

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Spell for Unmasking

By Tea Gerbeza

                             For Jocelyne

 

We get lost in comfortable hyperfocus.

You needle felt a tabby at my dining table

 

& I’m across the room on the couch

looping paper strips into wave-shapes for spring

 

leaves. There is weaving here

between our bodies, removal of masks

 

punctuated by the pop of purple plastic stim.

This room of non-conversation, the safety

 

we never found in others. Each with

our own headphones on, intermittently

 

sliding off one ear to ask how’s it going?

Display our progress: a felted ball,

 

a palmful of woven paper strips.

As I glue the pieces to make the leaf whole

 

I realize I’m gluing parts of myself

you first allowed to exist: no shame

 

in meltdown, the ritual of repetitive

movements—fingertips thread paper

 

through metal until shape emerges.

Take form off prongs, begin again.

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Copyright © Tea Gerbeza

 

Tea Gerbeza (she/her) is the author of How I Bend Into More (Palimpsest Press, 2025). She is a neuroqueer disabled writer and multimedia artist. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan and an MA in English & Creative Writing from the University of Regina. Most recently, her poem “Body of the Day” was a People’s Choice Award finalist in Contemporary Verse 2’s 2024 2-Day Poem Contest. She also made the longlist for Room magazine’s 2022 Short Forms contest. Tea won the Ex-Puritan’s 2022 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for poetry. She is one of four Pain Poets.

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