Segullah Journal

Honorable Mention, Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest THERE ARE THREE ACTUAL REFERENCES to me on Google. The first reference to Emily Milner, me, is on page six. Before that I wade through pages of references to not-me Emily Milners: genealogy charts, a talented high-school violinist, a devout Catholic from Georgia, a fourth-year physics major. The [...]

I LICK THE ENVELOPE and press it shut, affix the stamp, and place it in the mailbox with a sigh of satisfaction. This is my fourth letter to Amy. I’ve been writing to her every week since she checked herself in to a substance-abuse rehabilitation program. Amy, my neighbor’s live-in niece, first came to church [...]

I AM CLEANING OUT THE GUEST ROOM closet in my dad’s house when I find a quilt wrapped in plastic with only its backside showing. I call to my brother Matt. He has lived here the longest and seems to know the most about the closets and their contents. He’s been married only a few [...]

I DO NOT MOON PEOPLE. I can safely say that I have never, will never, could never, in my entire life, moon anyone. I have absolutely no desire nor inclination to drop my drawers and—well, this is clearly a place to avoid vivid description. So why would I, a woman who would never expose one [...]

2006 Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest Winner WHAT DID I HAVE TO TEACH THEM? Before me, I counted nineteen faces: a new crop of BYU honors students. At the last place I taught a writing course, the students needed me. They needed me to show them how to craft thesis statements, to fix split infinitives, [...]

USING COMFORTERS FOR BEDS may be the current trend, but it is not my personal favorite. I prefer the crazy quilt. Unique stitches outline different fabrics and shapes to maintain each piece’s sense of richness, bringing them together in an elegant display. These artistic creations remind me of my life and my character. As I [...]

I HAVE A REALLY NICE CORSET, which I wore in a Relief Society historical play. Several of the women, including my Relief Society president, had never seen me in a corset before. When one of them (an older woman who remembered corsetry as an oppressive article of underclothing) asked me why I owned a corset, [...]

I FOUND OUT my husband was sleeping with another woman by doing my laundry. The proof was in the pockets of his work pants—the ones he wears Monday and Tuesday, I wash on Wednesday, and are clean and dry in his wardrobe by Thursday. Well, I WOULD have found it. If he’d been having an [...]

I. MY GRANDMOTHER TRAVELED the world during the waking sleep of her final days in a Salt Lake City hospice center. Sometimes she imagined herself in Austria, at other times in Japan, Massachusetts, or Virginia. As a former military wife, her memories spanned the globe. And when she revisited those memories, she always found work [...]

“In 1847 Jedediah Grant led a company of Latter-day Saint pioneers from Winter Quarters, Nebraska, to the Salt Lake Valley. Not long before the company arrived in the valley, his six-month-old daughter, Margaret, contracted cholera and died. Her body was buried close to the trail, protected by only a mound of freshly dug clay. Soon [...]

JalShalley Lynch first met the missionaries while on a smoke break at work, and she asked them so many questions that the elders missed their next appointment. In March 2004, she joined the LDS Church. Strong-minded, honest, and ready to laugh, Shalley—sometimes known on the streets as Pooh—was born and raised in Washington D.C. She [...]

Poetry Contest Honorable Mention I curl myself around warm food in my belly— ancient, first and only comfort. I’m supposed to be rejoicing, sending my son into fields of white all ready to harvest. On sky blue sheets my heart tumbles out of my sickled chest, sends hope and sorrow to heaven where the sower [...]

Poetry Contest 3rd Place Winner Come to the temple of silence, away from sounds of weary want, from the grinding, the tearing of time. Come away from shouting daylight and find me in the stillness of your afternoon; your ordinary afternoon. Put down your swords, your plowshares; take up my burden, my quiet, easy burden. [...]

“And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden . . .” Genesis 3:8 You should have seen her face— wrung with shame, a tear cradled against one nostril. Nothing could have prepared her for the ache she felt in the shadow of her father’s disappointment. It wasn’t that she had [...]

I was obediently silent, my song shrouded for the night— well, one note, or perhaps two, loosed in response to the shafting moon and a brief volley, quite accidental, when the breeze swept by— But when dawn shivered against my breast, startling instinct, I shot my quiver high into the unsuspecting sky. What? Fault? Not [...]

Spikenard lingers. While loaves and garlic and fruits, her perfumes, Float, too, Filling to walls, drawing souls For nourishment For warmth For flavor For artistry for inspiration For a moment shared with Him As she kneads and presses and peels Keeping an eye for their want she Hovers, too, Filling the jug, the heart With [...]

Poetry Contest 2nd Place Winner (to my husband, on the 22nd anniversary of our December marriage in the Manti temple) We sail the vein: Perforated, gray southbound highway Down From dawn’s perch We approach, Splaying this languid stage of sagebrush       In two Vast contours, undulating, Old rocky chronology seeping left to right, [...]

Weapons falling: swords, spears, arrows, knives, metal clanking metal, final clashes before great clods (warm earth-smelling loam) covered up the brightness of all our crimson sins. All my dear ones kneeling, open-palmed, bowing to greet death, praising God, they died, and died, and died. Almost I fell too, until my eyes met those behind the [...]

I must die thin. I’m told when we are raised That not a single hair is lost. So I Now fear—at least, I would not be amazed To find—that every pound on hip and thigh And paunch remains in place. I can’t deny That what I weigh just now is not the “weigh” I want [...]

Poetry Contest Honorable Mention Because one man thought pity no disgrace (Perhaps he glimpsed my utter weariness Or saw the worry in my Joseph’s face), We have this welcome haven—humble, yes, But elevated by that kindliness Into a palace fit to house a king. We shelter here as unexpected guests Of sleepy beasts, and yet [...]

Silver droplets decorate the Spider’s web that simulates a fragile net wherein resides arachnid meals disguised as flies. Corners form a dark abode for insects gnawing on the wood of ancient timbers left in place to shelter rodents’ quick forays. Dusty sunbeams force their way through dirty windows, lost in haze, producing sallow spotlight rays [...]

First Place Winner, Poetry Contest To be a woman is to be heavy: to know the elements, one by one, to return to the earth which first gave life, to feel its weight, and to come forth again. A maiden is a naiad: light as air in elusive flame. Her heart is bound to nothing [...]