Ache

What my heart wouldn’t do
to love you back to life.
Strip you of your nightmares
& smother you in ever after.
All those aches of three a.m
offerings to twisted white sheets
& unearthly flesh consumed.
Beneath tin roofs & the sound
of heartbeats & writhing rain.
The way your pulse would feel
against my skin as no other has been.
To lick your wounds, tracing scars
with soft breaths & feral instincts.
Biting down on your collarbone
to calm the need to taste anything sweet.
Drenching my tongue among the salt
of you whimper, while you remember
what it feels like to scream out my name.
#love #poetry
It’s Hard to be a Writer.
It's hard to be a writer. Half the time nobody wants to read what it is you wrote. No matter how short or long. Ask a family member and you get looked at like you asked them to scrub the toilet with their tongue! Ask a friend and they will say, “yeah! I'll read that.” but they almost never do, or they skim it over and tell you how “good” it was.
No writer in the world writes for their own convictions. We write to tell a story that will insight emotion into the reader. That will leave the receiver with deeper questions, or will fill a void in the person's heart. We write for the world to read our stories, and yet, we can't find a single person who wants to read what we wrote! So do we as writers (who have a need to put words together) stop writing?
No!
Do we stop begging people to read or works?
No!
Do we stop sending in our stories to publishers who will continue to reject it? No!
We persevere, not because we know our writing is great and needs to be read! Because if we don't write, than we lose a piece of ourselves. We read what others have written and think, “I could have depicted that better.” We can't help but put to paper what is in our heads. And yes, we do it for the fulfillment of others. Not for us. I have never written something I deemed well written and said, “This is so good, I am going to keep it to myself so nobody will ever read it!” and I doubt any other writer, or published author has either. Being a self proclaimed writer is even harder. Nobody takes your writing seriously. You either don't have a grasp on proper grammar, or your punctuation and formatting is all wrong. And you think to yourself, “that's okay that's what editors and proofreaders are for”, but you are wrong! They are there to help real authors who are published and have a grasp on proper grammar, punctuation placement, and the correct formatting, not for the newbies and the eager to learn. As a new writer you are excited and quick to want to share and get feedback, so you join Facebook groups and sites like nanowrimo or Prose.com. You pour your heart out and into your work, but when you run it through Grammarly and Hemingwayediting.com, your disheartened to find your writing level is below average and your awesome “show don't tell”, words are looked at as mediocre. You get advice and critiquing like this:
“Don't use adverbs!”
“Don't use passive voices!”
“Don't use too many adjectives!”
“Don't attempt to write if you don't have the skills!”
So those of us who don't have “it ”right, stop writing. Who is going to listen to what we have to say anyway? Especially when the libraries, book stores, and editorials are all filled with what others have already written. You can't help but wonder,
“Is there enough room for me on those shelves?”
The answer should be YES!
Yes, there is room, yes you are good enough, yes, yes, yes! But that's not the feedback you receive. Your rejections, and your lack of supporters begin to weigh heavily on you. Your goal of 1,000 words a day, get cut in half, and than in half again, until all you are doing is thinking about writing, instead of actually writing. All those short stories, prose’, and poems that you thought were going to get recognized don't. You begin to realize that the only person reading your work is you and that's not why you write!
You join creative writing classes, and enroll in local authors clubs, but everyone there is in the same boat you are. They want their works published too! And of course if that means undermining your works to get theirs noticed, than so be it. It's better than being unknown.
And so the unpublished, unrecognized, under- educated writers who write for the world, slowly start to retreat. They hide their notebooks of half finished ideas away. The delve into other talents they have or other hobbies to occupy their mind. They read books that they think are okay, but could've been written better. And they forget. They forget about all the rejections, the criticisms and the critics. They busy themselves and their minds until they have buried all the negativity and self doubts and they take out the notebooks, the half written and almost forgotten stories. They rewrite and re-word and revise and they send their work out into the world yet again, just to go through the same vicious cycle.
Until one day, somebody reads what you wrote and gives you a simple thumbs up. On that day, you are a real writer! Who cares what everyone else said. Who cares about the rejections from the publishers, the critiques from the editors, and the looks from your family! Someone out there read something you wrote! And guess what? They liked it!
The sun after the rain-
I am beautiful, I think
With an oversized t-shirt
Baggy pants for full coverage
Low fat shake with a teaspoon of hurt.
I smile,
The best ones are upside down
The mind is the true enemy
Even without makeup, I’m a clown.
Excessive amount of fatness
Curves that are too thick for the eyes
Cellulites and thunder thighs
Underarm wings that can possible make me fly.
Stretch marks like tattoos
All over my naked body
Neck with extra roles
Mirror on the wall, be honest, I do look funny.
Come on self-esteem
Boost something new and hopeful
It’s a new year already
Tired of the old and the doubtful-
Wake up, breathe in and breath out
It is a brand new day
Start with abundance of love and joy
Let the negative fade away.
I am beautiful, I know
Yes confident where have you been?
Look at these luscious imperfections
And that smile, true beauty from within.
Embracing thy body
Let the judgmental eyes see
No coverage of shame no more
Taking the first step of the new me.
5:43
5:43 pm. Such an odd number. I like round numbers: 5:30, 6:00, even 5:45 has a certain balance to it. 5:43 is crooked, twisted, ugly.
They should have been home at 5:30. Dinner was in the oven. Shrimp and scallops with tomato and spinach. Herbed pearl couscous. I even made a pie. They’d been begging for one. I kept saying no, wait till Thanksgiving. But I made it.
It’s still sitting on the counter. The casserole dish with the shrimp and scallops is still on the floor by the wall where I threw it after the police rang the bell. After I ran to the door thinking they forgot the key or had their arms full of flowers or bags or just felt like making me run to the door. After I opened the door, smiling at the officer, asking if I could help him, before, I took in the hat in the hand, and the sorrowful eyes. After I screamed no or please or just screamed as the officer stepped in and helped me while I cried and he explained that there had been an accident. That a truck had lost control and crushed the car my son drove with my husband as they came home from work. That they had died instantly.
“Is there anyone I can call for you, ma’am?”
My neighbor heard the screaming, I guess, and came running in that moment. The officer, relieved, gave her some information and left.
She walked me in to the house, holding me.
I smelled dinner.
I ran to the kitchen, took it out of the oven and threw it against the wall. The clock fell, too.
It was 5:43.
