What is Waiting on Cicadas?

When I was a kid growing up in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, I spent a lot of time outside, passing the hours with my brother in the oppressive heat. We didn’t have air conditioning, so sweating outside was just as good, often better, than sweating indoors. Many of my memories were formed beneath the weeping willow behind our garage. We sat in the dirt. We poked sticks into holes. We made up games and told one another stories. And one summer, hundreds of cicada crawled out of the ground, climbed into the trees, and serenaded us with their song.

When my bother died from a heroin overdose at the start of the 2020 pandemic, I was cast back in time to these sun-drenched days. This coincided with a shift in my writing practice. I’d shifted from plays to short stories to stream of conscience journaling about my memories, musings, and dreams. I visited the past to help me into the future. That exploration was a hunt for ghosts, a waiting game to stumble upon the magic of the unexpected.

Seven or so years and many dozens of publisher rejections into that practice, I attended an event to hear one of my favorite writers, Roxane Gay, speak. “Writers write,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

So I was a writer. I had permission to call myself one, though permission was not necessary. But sharing my words was another practice altogether.

I am a magical thinker. A believer in signs. I am on constant sentry for divine intervention. And lately, one has been loud and clear. Share your message.

I don’t know that I have a message - but I do have a voice - and I’m casting it here, under the weeping willow of my mind. I’m waiting for the magic, keeping watch for its emergence.

About Me

If you’re curious, you can find my bio here. Read my work and see some of my art at elizabethnelson.net.