In a Bluebonnet field in Texas, I listen to the wind shuffle through the labyrinth of stems.Everything is too blue for me. I catch grasshoppers, put them in a jar, they sing to me: Are you lonely? For the longest time I’ve wanted to be alone. Friday nights are the loneliest. I’m afraid to admit— time is killing me. Sometimes I’m so far away I forgot silence is another form of living.When a winter storm hit Texas, the bluebonnet field sounded like glass. Every stem coming undone. The field was quiet then — Spring.Forgive me for I am reminded of what can revive. My parents taught me solitude is another form of survival. That’s why the grasshoppers keep to themselves. In Mexico, I’ve seen swarms of grasshoppers devour Abuelo’s milpa. I’ve seen what solitude’s hunger is capable of. I keep waiting for beauty toblossom from solitude like a burst of indigo in Spring. Before bed, I listen to the grasshoppers I catch.Vibrations of their canto echo like a llanto through my body reminding me how lonely the field must be without them.
A Note on Solitude
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Copyright © 2024 by Saúl Hernández.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Saúl Hernández is a queer writer from San Antonio, TX who was raised by former undocumented parents. Saúl has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. As a finalist for The Wisconsin Poetry Series, his debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is out now, University of Wisconsin Press. Saúl is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient. He’s the winner of both the 2022 Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize judged by Joy Priest & the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize judged by Victoria Chang. He is a finalist for the 2024 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize & Best of The Net. Saúl’s work is forthcoming/featured in The American Poetry Review, Sundog Lit, Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Literary Hub, Columbia Journal, Pleiades, Split This Rock, Frontier Poetry, Poet Lore, Foglifter Journal, Oyster River Pages, Cherry Tree, Atlanta Review, Quarterly West, PANK Magazine, Pidgeonholes, The Acentos Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Normal School, Rio Grande Review, and Adelaid Literary Magazine. He’s a 2019 Macondista, a 2021 Tin House Alum, & a 2024 Lambda Literary Fellow.
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