poetry, stories, and other thoughts on the world
The Written Word
what is here
that include written articles, excerpts of poetry, short stories, and creative writing that takes a memoir approach.
Selected works
Things I didn't have the courage to say but wish that I did
1
And as I caressed my own skin I remembered your sweet kisses in the night. Memories brought back of tender love, of finger tips moving across the waters of my skin.
I remembered remembering a moment long ago, when the smile of your eyes brightened my day more powerfully than the sun, when the warmth of your arms that held me so close in the stormy nights felt more intimate than my breath, more intimate than my mother pushing me out of her womb onto new beginnings.
And that's what I remembered. Remembering you with a sweetness as slow as molasses in the winter, as sweet as melted chocolate on a ripened strawberrry. As sweet as the juices of a plum on a hot summer day. As sweet as the grass I lay in, having the clouds and breeze cascade over me just as your touch once did.
You were my new beginning.
You are my ending. [...]
You are (now),
Out of my mind. As a storm is forgotten once the sun shines through, I tread on the muddy ground with remnants of you still between the curves of my remembering.
The Unspoken memories of you (Excerpt 1)
[...] To feel so big and yet be so small all at once. To be so heavy, yet light as a feather. To be enraptured by thought, yet dull of mind. To be witty, sharp, courageous and seemingly without fear. And yet. Yet. I remember holding both fear and courage together in my left hand, like two small balls I danced with them between my small finger tips, always wondering to myself which one I would play with the most that day.
I love you.
I love you.
I miss you.
I miss you.
Goodbye.
Good night ---
I don't think she ever noticed I caught her face. So gleeful to leave us behind, leave me behind when all I wanted was for her to stay for just one more day. One more hour. One more minute. I would have been content, even with one more second. Until I finally learned to be content. Until I finally learned how to stop expecting her in the places I imagined her to be. I, remembering and then forgetting because the present needed more attention than my imagination.
I remember holding both expectation and disappointment together in my right hand. Like two small balls I dance with them between my more grown finger tips, wondering always to myself which one I should expect that day.
[...]
I find myself in twilight, in the middle of a dream. Dreaming of you and how I wished for things to be.
What if instead of "good-bye" we said, "until next time", when we know it's really "never again"
it ended on an exhale
Excerpt
To be needed does not mean that I am loved.
To be loved is to be needed.
To be loved is to be loved.
I love you because I love you.
I love you and so I need you.
I love you and so I give you what you need.
willingly and because it is the only way that I know.
Sit with it, grow from it
[...] Maybe our closeness is not necessarily in proximity but emotionally in how I can call her every day now and talk to her about the good days and bad days. I can do it in an honest way. In a way that is fully me. In a way that I hope to be fully known, or at least be known more now in my adulthood than I had the chance to in my youth.
And I'm jealous, envious, angry, upset, and a little confused. That they seem to want what they want how they want it, ignoring all the beautiful moments of nuance and of change and of adjustments; it makes me wonder if they know that because of that way of thinking, they won't get anything at all.
From very young I was burdened with the reality of compromise, I found myself having to be okay with not getting my way, and learning to, and often-times, being okay with how things ended up. That even though I may have wanted a particular outcome, it taught me how to find the beauty in the unexpected and taught me to hope in what was to come.
(Even if it never did).
Moment by Moment (excerpt)
