These poems are published connected to a project support by the DC Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs. Jennifer Helgeson was a participant in the 2026 Jewish Poets retreat supported by the grant.

Inheritance

Not the objects—
though they matter, in their way.
It’s the way a story is told
as if it might disappear
if not spoken aloud.
It’s the pause before eating,
not quite a prayer,
not quite silence.
It’s knowing how to leave
a place you love
and still carry it intact.
Somewhere in the body
is a map with no legend—
and still, we follow it.

The Long Table

There is always room for one more,
even when there isn’t.
Chairs arrive from other rooms,
from memory,
from years that refuse to stay gone.
Someone argues about something small
as if it matters greatly.
Someone laughs too loudly.
A child listens,
collecting voices
like small, bright stones.
At the center:
food, yes—
but also the stubborn act of staying.

Names

A name is never just a name.
It carries a room,
a language half-remembered,
a hand reaching through time.
You say it once—
it answers from several directions.
You say it again—
and something stands beside you
that was not there before.
We keep them polished
with use,
these small doors.

The Unbroken Thread

It is not that the world stopped spinning
when the calendar returned to this page,
but that the light hit the floor
at the same sharp angle
and the air held the same hint of coming rain,
and for a moment,
the distance between then and now
collapsed like a well-worn letter.

To remember a friend
is to carry a quiet weight,
not of lead, but of something like sea-glass—
smoothed by the tides of the months,
translucent when held to the sun.
You find them in the syntax of a joke,
in the specific silence of a Sunday morning,
or in the way you now reach
for a door they once held open for you.

The candle burns down to the base of the glass,
shrinking the shadows until they disappear.
But the Yahrzeit is not just a counting of days;
it is an admission that some people
are too vast to be contained by a single life.
They spill over into ours,
leaving a trail of salt and light that we follow,
one year at a time,
until the path itself feels like home.

Jennifer Freya Helgeson’s creative writing explores themes of memory, loss, nature, and human resilience. She holds a PhD in Environmental and Developmental Economics and has authored several peer-reviewed publications, co-edited textbooks, and published in several media outlets. She began writing poetry for publication in autumn 2025; her poetry has appeared in several online and print anthologies. When she’s not writing, Jennifer enjoys gardening, dancing, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending meaningful time with her dog, close friends, and family.

Featured image Oregon Department of Transportation, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons