In the spirit of July’s Interdependence theme, this week’s Featured Creative is the inspiringly prolific poet, Meggie Royer. Looking through Tumblr’s “writing” tag sometime in 2013, I came across her blog, Writings for Winter, and have since fallen for her heart-on-your-sleeves-style writing that still manages to connect with cynical millennials. Meggie is a poet who’s fearlessly honest when tackling life’s most difficult emotional challenges. We thought her work perfectly captures a variety of intermingling alliances. Her third book, The No You Never Listened To, is now available via Words Dance Publishing, and her brand new online literary magazine, Persephone’s Daughters is accepting poetry, prose, and artwork focused on empowering female victims of abuse and degradation until July 8th (writers of all gender identities are welcome to submit). Throughout the week, we will feature some of our favorite poems from her blog, as well as her responses to questions about her work/creative process.
~Kim Kaletsky, Ideablog Managing Editor
“The Life Cycle of a Fruit Fly”
The life cycle of drosophila melanogaster,
also known as the common fruit fly,
consists of copulation, which lasts 15-20 minutes, then the females
lay approximately 400 eggs, 5 at a time, into rotting fruit or mushrooms.
The entire lifespan of a fruit fly is 30 days or fewer: a mere month.
Call me sentimental, but I’m a sucker for apocalypse stories.
I’m sorry about your cancer, but if you only had a month to live,
I’d call you up and play Scrabble with you and let you win
even if you spelled stupid words like cake and beltloop and toxic waste.
They say it’s metastasized to the rest of your body.
I wouldn’t get mad at you even if you voted for Mitt Romney
in the next presidential election. In high school everyone always joked
about how fucking a cancer patient is like fucking a zombie,
but I don’t give a damn about your bald head. You look handsome
with or without hair. And on your last day,
when the fruit flies are closing their eyes
and their wings are slowing to a halt,
I’ll let you fall asleep on my shoulder
so I can capture your last breaths in a jar.
Buy Meggie’s latest book, The No You Never Listened To, here. 
***
Your writing has gotten attention recently from places as well-known as the non-profit To Write Love on Her Arms. Is the opportunity to write for them and share stories about your own struggles with depression therapeutic for you? Have you found that it’s therapeutic for others?
The opportunity to write for organizations and websites that focus on mental health issues like depression, and to share my stories with others, is definitely therapeutic because it allows me to release pent-up feelings and frustration when no one else in my life truly “gets it.” But then I do share my stories and other people do get it, and there’s a kind of bond formed and a kind of new trust with myself that my experiences are all completely and totally valid. And the therapeutic aspect & catharsis go both ways; I post writing about my struggles and feel pride at the support and positivity they are met with, and when others read them, they feel less alone, and they feel better. I’ve lost count of the times someone has messaged me to thank me for a certain poem I’ve written that has saved their life or prevented them from self-harming, etc. Writing truly does make a difference.
See more of Meggie’s Featured Creative posts on our Ideablog
~~~Meggie Royer is a writer and photographer from the Midwest who is currently majoring in Psychology at Macalester College. Her poems have previously appeared in Words Dance Magazine, The Harpoon Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, and more. She has won national medals for her poetry and a writing portfolio in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and was the Macalester Honorable Mention recipient of the 2015 Academy of American Poets Student Poetry Prize.
