Graduation Night

The night sky gasps and exhales and the stars swell out from within the folds of the navy blue sky.  Twilight now, and heaven is open and pondering its own fragility.  You are to my left and the wind, the first breeze of the summer, carries our mingled silent breaths somewhere else; maybe to the trees, or maybe to the ponderous, world weary stars.

I had run away from you, and you had chased me--laughing, as we moved up the hill past the low hanging boughs of apple trees and pear trees, looping around an apricot tree before I let you catch me.  Or maybe, before you let me be caught.  Your arms looped around my waist and you pulled me into your kiss.  We tumbled to the earth, cratering the parched grass with our bodies.

I roll away from you and my eyes turn upward, my fingers reaching out, grasping at your fingers that are larger than mine, but fit against mine as they lace like shoes tied together.  You become my anchor, my only purchase on earth to keep me from floating away up into the stars to settle on the moon.  I try to remember how to breathe like a younger version of myself--before running stole my air.  We are not old yet, but infinity stretches up above us like the night sky.

I roll on my side and you turn your head and smile at me in the darkness; white and even, they move the darkness around us and the stars are blotted out above me momentarily.  My fingers, pale and trembling in the wan moonlight, trace the musculature of your arms, kiss the contours of your lips, and skate across the planes of your brow.  You are beautiful, exquisite; mine.

Our silhouettes reshape the nighttime scenery on the hill, and your arms create a small niche in the universe as we lay side by side staring up at the stars.

Skin and Ribs

I trace a heart on your chest.
I imagine it beats under your skin
Beneath ribs.
I can't feel it anymore.
I guess I never noticed--
You falling out of love with me.

"Green" by D.H. Lawrence

The dawn was apple-green
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone clear like flowers undone
For the first time, now for the first time seen

"Cleave to the Human Condition"

This is a repost from the blog by Chuck Wendig, terribleminds.com.   It is only an excerpt from a much larger post entitled: "25 Writer Resolutions For 2013".  I felt for the creative nonfiction genre that this specific resolution from the article was particularly good.


"Thing is, we write stories for one reason: to talk about people.  And we read stories because we want to read about people.  Every story is a Rosetta Stone attempting to translate the human condition to the humans gazing upon it with knitted-brow and quizzical sneer.  When we as writers drift away from that, we lose what's powerful about stories: we lose the character.  Stories are written by people, for people, about people."

S*** My Mom Says

“Honey, are you crying?”

I sigh as I shove the keys to room 418 of Murphy Hall into the keyhole and fumble with the lock while my mom waits with bated breath for my answer.  It is always like this—since second grade, when my teachers sent home concerned letters about my constant crying at school, and fourth grade when my aunt died, while trying to cross a high way in Myrtle Beach—my mom has made it a mission in her life to find the small quaver in my voice, or the tremble of my lower lip and eradicate all the bad things in my life.  It is admirable, and I know that she means well, but after receiving the same worried greeting all through middle school and high school, and now college, the question is old.  I try to regulate my breathing, so I don’t sound like I am sobbing, and not let the frustration seep into my voice when I answer her, “No mom.  I’m not crying.”

I enter my dorm and sling my book bag onto my unmade bed, picking my way through the ungodly mess my roommate made of the room when she did her laundry last night.

            

“You don’t have to snap at me,” she said, and I know she heard it—that teeny bit of anger that I always have when I talk to her.  Compared to when I was in high school, that caustic hostility I always associated with thoughts of my mother has faded into white noise in my subconscious, but I guess old habits die hard.   Resentment is hard to kill, and as childish as it is to think that my mom and her affair is the reason my parents divorced, there is always going to be a nasty little whisper in my head to contend with.

            

“I know, mom,” I say as I sit at my desk, staring out the window while white snow tumbles to the ground outside.  “I’m sorry.”  I meant it, too— for everything.  I was sorry for hating her in high school, and blaming the failure of my parent’s tail spinning marriage on her.  I was sorry for the time’s I had screamed at her, and slammed the door in her face.  And I was mostly sorry for never wanting to be like her.

            

“I was only trying to help,” she sniffs daintily into the phone, and as much as I want to disagree with her—I can’t; helping is all she ever tries to do.  If I had to choose the kind of mother I would want to be like in the future, I suppose it would be like her-- hopefully wiser.

            

“I know, mom.  I have to go, but I will talk to you later.” 

I hang up the phone.

A simple love poem with a very powerful image.  It is a personal favorite of mine.

A Haiku

Pink petals of the peony
Sloshing over with raindrops
—A rare teacup!

The Introduction

When Dr. Sunday asked our class to start a blog my initial reaction was mild panic and frustration--of all the things she could have asked us to do why did it have to be blog?  I tried to start one before for the things I wrote, but opening myself up to the criticism of the internet was absolutely daunting, and now I have to do this for my class as well?-- joy.

I find myself in the quandary of what to write; nothing significant has happened in my life.  I have not battled a life-threatening disease, or traveled abroad and seen the world through the eyes of a stranger; my life is an average one; as are the struggles that I face.  The only thing that this blog can do is make me a better writer, and maybe give an audience to what I have written, though the words may be beaten down like an old path used by every writer.