It remains like a splinter under my thumb, too deep to pick out. That one story. Not a great story -- a great story is like a shotgun blast, hitting my brain and my heart at the same instant. Sentence fragments, like tiny lead pellets, lodge in my internal organs. One day the coroner will make careful note of them in his own dispassionate words. Until then, the great stories are vital to my life. But will that nagging splinter be revealed?

I don’t read to escape, I read to relate. I read for that aha moment that comes through connection with someone or something. I read, looking for intimacy with a total stranger. Did we meet in another life? To read a great story is to hold a warm and beating heart in my hands, if only for a sentence. At different times in my life, different authors have touched a nerve. Some inspired, some enlightened, some made me laugh, and some shattered my expectations. Short stories, I find, are often the most intense.

When I was a young woman, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” caught me unawares, made me think, made me tremble. Flannery’s fiction has remained lodged in my psyche all these years, and now I realize I am the grandmother, and the story means something more, or something different, than it did the last time I read it. Or the first time. Flannery O’Connor’s story is more like a splinter than a shotgun blast, but it has stayed with me all these years, worrying me now and then. I can still feel the point deep under my thumb, next to the bone.

- lscollison

2/20/2021

Speaking of "navigation," I have literally experienced that metaphor, crossing an expanse of ocean in a 36' sailboat with my husband in 2000. During the passage I read stories including Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro), Two Years Before the Mast (Richard Henry Dana, Jr.) and Ship of Fools (Katherine Anne Porter). While aboard, I wrote my own stories too; several of them were published as personal experience articles. One story I scribbled while underway became a novella, Water Ghosts (Old Salt Press, 2015). The idea for my first published novel, Star-Crossed (Knopf, 2006) came to me on a night watch while at the helm of a much larger sailing ship, HM Bark Endeavour, a circumnavigating replica of Capt. James Cook's 18th century vessel, on a crossing from Vancouver to Hawaii in 1999.

it just seems a little funny to me to look up and see my ‘name’ staring back at me on this screen. a little bit baffling, too, to be honest.

like, that’s me. is it? i believe that whoever this sadwinistic is, she’s more me than i feel like i am, in my own flesh and with my own bones.

perhaps it’s because she has all of my words.

caterpillars in my chest

swathed in sleeves of silk

in which their xanthous bodies

will crumble

like my composure

beneath the shimmering

wonder of your eyes

a wonder soft and light

like a summer evening breeze

that stirs up the ashes of the

caterpillars cocooned behind my collarbone

that they may rise again

in a flutter of kaleidoscopic wings

beating against the walls of my heart

darling, i want to be your music

i want to be your song

but when my lips part to sing for you

all that escapes are

b u t t e r f l i e s

stand / sit / live and breathe / every single thing i've done / this day feels like / dreaming backwards in / bloody lakes and oceans / feel the salt rising up to my chin / close my eyes against the water / wanting to meet its similarity / my eyes feel tight, today / like i can't really see / not through the fog wafting over me / and it's a little dis- / -orientating /

i wonder, somewhat / idly and guiltily / if you are only speaking of the / things i've done because / you don't know what else to / speak about and of me / wish i'd stop saying in my head / what you don't say / but, oh, you must mean /

i need to set up / a keyboard, today, / need to learn how to play / (do i really want to) / (learn the way i think i ought to be) / (i think i ought not to) / before i can play these / words i've written, / these words just ready to / burst from my skin /

i am tired / i am tired of not / being okay and having it / hurt those around me, make them / afraid - i am tired / of feeling and going down / blackened / bruised / spirals of depression / when someone says / 'you don't seem okay' / or even the words 'you' / 'are making me afraid' / I DON'T WANT TO / i am tired i / am tired, i / am tired, i / am tired, i / am tired. /

“Nature’s first green is gold”

A gold that scatters about

And hides beneath the brown

Or writhes around trees’ crowns

Mist drapes tentatively around emaciated tree branches

Citadels all around me—

Standing guard, guarding the

Door of Death until that day sweeps in

Fallen logs sleep on the ground

While squirrels seek to disturb their rest

Golden seashells ornament the feet of Neptune

And with each gentle motion, four more kiss his soles

A hidden trail greets my eyes and I

Choose to leave this golden dream

To seek my own reality

i am not going

to let my fear of anyone

but my Lord, my Father, my Shepard,

rule my life, again.

i do not want to let my fear of

the things you aren't saying (but, oh, you must mean)

make me say things i don't think are true (make me lie, to you)

and make me feel ways i wish i didn't feel, yet feel almost every single day

I MAY BE AFRAID

OF YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU DO AND SAY

BUT I AM NOT GOING TO LET IT

TAKE ME OVER AGAIN

I WILL START TODAY

AND IF AND WHEN I FALL

I WILL CALL ON MY FATHER

AND PRAY FOR THE STRENGTH TO GET BACK UP AGAIN

I WILL START ANOTHER DAY

AND I WILL BE OKAY

BECAUSE I AM HIS

and i am His and i am His and i am His

As a child, December only ever meant one thing to me - it was my favourite month, because it was my birthday and Christmas. It was a break from school and presents all in one, and the time of year when I could ask for anything I wanted, no matter how ridiculous. I didn't always get it of course, but that's how life goes.

During my GCSEs and A levels I hated December and Chistmas. It meant revision - or rather, the guilt of not revising for the upcoming tests in January, and having to put more work in than usual.

Now? I have mixed feelings about December. I love it as a month - I will never forget my childhood feelings of joy or elation - who ever could?

However the month will always be tainted by that fact that this is indeed my birthday - it marks another year older, another year further from my childhood, another year further into being an adult. It's also the end of the year - that's something I've never been very appreciative of, either. I hate how the new year comes afterwards, and everyone makes their new year's resolutions that they go on to forget.

But anyway. That's December in a nutshell for me - I love it and hate it, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.

I have never been so speechless before. I pride myself on my words - on my sarcastic quips, on my quick thinking (or at least I try to anyway, it doesn't always work out like that). Yet somehow you have this knack for just taking my breath away. I feel the tears well up behind my eyes and my heart feels like it couldn't beat any faster. The smile on my mouth feels fake - it doesn't capture nearly half of the emotion I want to show you.

My breath doesn't come - I laugh, what else is there to do? My heart beats faster and it doesn't stop and it sinks because I know there is no way I can express what this means to me. For a second you make me regret shutting off my emotions.

You take the world away from my feet as you show me things that I didn't think were possible. Things I didn't think I could feel.

Winter is my favorite concerto of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It makes me feel…I don’t know…pain? A slow, agonizing death? Well, yes, but also, discordant, vivid life. It reminds me that in winter, nature is merely hibernating, growing strong beneath the hard, cold earth in preparation for another beautiful spring. It’s there, beneath the surface, if you can only see it, imagine it, despite the absence of color, warmth and light.

In winter, the world around me often seems peopled by shadows that haunt me. The starkness of the day time world – naked trees, grassless earth, perhaps snow-covered landscapes making the world blindingly white – invites introspection. I cannot be distracted by gentle, warm breezes, colorful flowers, trees heavy with leaves, lively with the chirping of birds. There are no children running gleefully away from chasing mothers nor dogs leaping joyfully after squirrels and rabbits. And so, I look inside and am beset by the shadows of those who have touched me, whose memory lies within me, who have helped shape the person I have become. But who only live in me, for they walk the earth no longer, but rather rest under the cold hard earth whose seeming barrenness has sent me inside. To remember.

Then there are the shadows at windows. Short, cold days lead to fewer meetings with neighbors on the street; one sees only their shadows in windows at night. You know they live, just hibernating. Perhaps we need the time away from each other as well. Perhaps the constant activity of spring, summer and fall necessitate the slow, introspective days of winter.

An almost silence.

The quiet, only a gentle hold with fingertips grazing your cheek like a subtle breeze. 

Sand, cold and damp lays underfoot to fall back and forth

Balanced.

You can hear a voice, smooth to the touch. 

Rounded words, dripping from their tongue, falling heavy onto skin. 

The sound wraps around you like silk, clouding your every thought. 

A lament that rises you to the soles of your feet.

A slow unconscious motion, as if sleepwalking. 

Brought to the water’s edge, 

Down dominating dunes.  

And now you ask the Ocean.

You ask the Ocean to help you feel, 

To envelop you within its waters,

To have its life pulse through you. 

The glow of a silver moon will 

Dance over skin 

Like ink on paper, the light touch ingrained 

in memory and meaning. 

If you dip your foot beneath the waves, they’ll welcome you, 

Flowing up your legs to fill lungs with the deep inevitable. 

Have you ever heard the ocean’s voice? 

It’s color copies the rise and fall of the sky, but it’s voice 

Always rings blue. 

Holds sharp with a calm resonance to ripple throughout 

As waves crash and leave foam in their wake.

This color comes with no demands, just Connection. 

Flowing through you.

No need to understand, 

For there’s no reason other than the want to

Exist.