Cassie Pruyn is the author of the poetry collection Lena, which details the relationship at the center of this essay. Lena was the 2017 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry through Texas Tech University Press. Cassie Pruyn is also the author of Bayou St. John: A Brief History (The History Press, 2017), and her poems and reviews have appeared in The Normal School, The Los Angeles Review, The Common, 32 Poems, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.