unburden your soul unto mine
and i will embrace you
unfurl your butterfly wings
and sail into the sky.
Death may be your friend
but life will be your savior.
is a love not seen even given?
is a love not heard even received?
is a love not felt even real?
let your heart fly as far as the eye can see
unburden your soul unto mine
This piece, and the first line, was inspired by the song Broken Strings by James Morrison and Nelly Furtado.
you can’t play on broken strings
you can’t fly on broken wings
you can’t stand on a broken beam
you can’t sleep through broken dreams
you can’t fix it with a broken part
you can’t love with a broken heart
the truth is
most days I’m lost
afraid of going home
were you ever my home?
or just a habit I couldn’t break?
we never sailed smoothly,
you and I.
I can’t let you in
but I can’t let you go
I want to tell you I’m sorry.
I’m not sure if you’ll kiss me or hit me.
I don’t know which I fear more.
so i keep it to myself
pour a little water
at the oak tree of regret.
was there ever a moment
where we could have made it work?
when i was a little harder
and you were a little softer?
I guess I never trusted us to get it right.
I’m not sure why you left
I’m not sure why I stayed
I was afraid you’d never come back
but I always panicked when you did.
i didn’t know how to walk away
i still don’t.
As you sail away
I’ll be waiting on the shore
for you can always come back home
paralyzed
between these thighs
lie all the lies
we wanted to believe
in order to leave
the past behind
the wrinkle in time
where we could find
a fresh start
for used hearts
so i let myself be held down by you
only to be held down
by you
The life unlived excites me
much more than this one.
The sights she sees
The people she meets
The love she receives
The person she becomes.
I often wonder
where exactly she left me.
Why did she go her own way?
Why didn’t she take me with her?
What I wouldn’t give
to go back
to wherever
whenever
our one road became two
and i didn’t know
when I could have become her
and lived her life
and become all the things
I’ll never be.
Or what if that moment
whenever it was
wherever it was
that passed me by
still led here
this same road to nowhere
with only different potholes to fix
In my junior year of high school, we got two new transfer students. Brothers. They somehow came in with a cache of popularity stored up which I, in two years, had dismally failed to achieve. And they had the nerve to be fairly cute.
I hated them instantly.
Big Brother was the absolute worst. Ever the caricature of a dumb jock. Plus he was kind of a jerk to boot. Thankfully I never had to interact with him directly. Just seeing him and hearing about him was more than I could stand.
Little Brother seemed like a follower. Physically, he seemed like he moved slower. Like he just drifted around. I assumed, being related to Big Brother, that 1) he was also a dumbass and 2) that he was high most of the time. He just seemed to kinda follow along with whatever Big Brother was doing. He wasn’t the kinda kid to really forge his own path.
Senior year, I had a couple of classes with Little Brother. I remember one time we were sitting in the bleachers, and I had my headphones on. He, of high school fame, turned to me, of solid “nobody to worry about” non-fame, and asked me what I was listening to.
I started to lie. A black girl in the 90s from a fairly well to do neighborhood listening to Bryan Adams wasn’t going to get me up the fame ladder anyway. But I didn’t. I admitted my awesome taste in music.
He asked to listen, and so we shared a few verses of Everything I Do I Do It For You. He’s never heard it, but he likes it, and asked me how I’d heard it. We talked a few more minutes and that was that. The jaded part of me thought he’d go back and laugh about me to his friends, but there was a part of me even in the moment that didn’t think he would. And, to my knowledge, he didn’t. From then on, we casually head nodded each other when we saw each other. And what I learned from that day, Little Brother wasn’t so bad. Who knew?
After college, the brothers moved into the apartment building I was living in at the time. We had the same routine, so we often saw each other in the morning. I was never quite sure if Little Brother remembered exactly who I was. I’m sure he didn’t remember my name. But he was kind enough to acknowledge my existence with a friendly hello and a wave, whereas Big Brother continued on in his, literally, blissful ignorance. This has been over 10 years now. I haven’t seen them since. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve always been pretty reserved. I could have said “hey, didn’t you go to [school]” and tried to strike up a conversation. But I didn’t. I thought, eh, what’s the point?
A few weeks ago, Little Brother killed himself. We weren’t close at all, but I was shaken to the core. I still kind of am. Because I knew then that the signs were there all along. He was always kind of sad, which I mistook for lazy or high. I can’t remember ever seeing him truly at ease. But we were 17 – who was at ease? He never seemed to completely belong. But again, 17.
You really never know how much a passing stranger needs a smile, a friendly chit chat, or just 3 minutes where they’re not thinking about suicide and death and sadness.
Or even your friends. Who tell you they’re fine. Who tell you they’ll get over it and it’s not a big deal. Maybe it’s not. But maybe it is. Sometimes we don’t know how to ask for help. Sometimes we don’t even know what we need. Sometimes you have to be willing to see behind the pleasantries, look to see if the smile doesn’t reach the eyes. They are screaming right in front of you. They need you to ask, and to reach out a hand.
I’ve been there. Maybe not to an extreme, but far closer than I care to admit and for more recently than I care to admit. And quite honestly I’ll probably be there again. But in those moments, there were times when just a brief laugh at something completely ridiculous saved me, at least for that moment.
BUT your acts of kindness can be the bridge between hurt and help.
I don’t know if Little Brother and I would ever have become friends. I don’t know if it would have made a difference in the end. But I do believe that I could have provided a few moments of joy along the way. And that’s another failure I’ll live with forever.
Don’t fail your friends, if you can.
RIP Little Brother
1979-2016
This piece was inspired by a conversation on shame, particularly the shame women often feel, or are made to feel, about their bodies.
There’s this moment, when he looks at me. I live for those moments, however rare they are. In that kernel of sand in the universe of time, he sees me. Or, doesn’t see me.
When he looks at me, the second before he takes my face in his hands, before our mouths and our desire collide – when he looks at me in that moment, I am free.
I forget to worry about whether my lipstick has faded. I forget to obsess over whether my foundation is still adequately covering my hideous scars. I forget to fret about undone nails, the softness of my belly despite the occasional crunches I do, the extravagance of my thighs.
I forget to kick myself for not putting on mascara to mask my paltry eyelids. I’m not concerned about the wideness of my nose or the blotchiness of my skin. I don’t think about my unremarkable ass, my weak jawline, the unsubstantiality of my chin.
When he looks at me, he sees me. Well, not me. Not the girl who lights up when her favorite band drops a new single. Not the girl who just wants to be held. Not the dreamer of love, the empath, the girl who can lose an entire day mired in a book. He certainly doesn’t see, or tries not to see, the girl who would love every piece of him if he would just open the door the tiniest of cracks. No, he doesn’t see me.
But, he doesn’t see me. He doesn’t see scars or makeup or large thighs or blemished skin. He sees passion and lust – nothing more, nothing less.
In that moment, when he looks at me, I forget everything but the anticipation of what’s to come, his hands on my body, the delicious luxuriousness of the unfolding night.
In that moment, when he looks at me, I am free. I forget to hate myself for not being perfect.
This post was inspired by a prompt – https://brevitymag.com/nonfiction/naked/
She stood, back straight, lips pursed, head held high, surveying the scene. Sixty years ago, she might have been mistaken for a ballerina, but for the hips that swayed a little too freely, and the unmistakable cookie dough complexion of her skin.
But that was sixty years ago, and dancing was out of the question now, with one new knee and another that needed replacing. Yet she never lost the daunting command of her presence. Whatever happened here today, she would have the final word. It mattered not that the day was not about her. Kathryn Roberts had standards, and her standards would be met.
With eyes peering over bifocals that she managed to make look stylish, she took in the room – the decorations, the cake displayed with blue and gold writing (“Congratulations Ethan”). The food was being set up in aluminum containers along the wall. She noted the care the caterers took i setting up the food, taking silent approval of the display. Her approval, it should be noted simply meant turning her attention elsewhere.
“Terry!” she called, to her only daughter, her proxy in righting the egregious imperfections of the world around her. “They’re not just going to leave the cake in the box like that, are they?”
Terry sighed. She didn’t care what the cake looked like, and Ethan certainly didn’t care. He was a thirteen year old boy who was being celibrated for doing his homework. But she knew she’d get no peace until the matter was resolved. “I’ll fix it Mama, don’t worry about it. Just go sit down and we’ll take care of everything.”
Kathryn was never much in the business of doing what she was told, but her legs were indeed beginning to ache after the short walk from the car. So she found a seat, in the center of the room of course, perched carefully upon it as if she were a doll carefully placed in her seat by a meticulous young girl. Over the next thirty minutes, Kathryn pointed with her cane, with crooked yet elegant fingers, or even waving down passersby to fix this or straighten that, until she was satisfied.
Finally the party was to start. As Ethan walked in, still in his cap and gown, the room burst into thunderous applause and cheers. Kathryn, beaming with pride at her great-grandson, at once a young man but still a shy little boy.
She grabbed my hand, enclosing my hand in her bony fingers. For a frail woman she had a remarkably strong grip. She leaned over to me, never taking her eyes off Ethan. “This is probably the last graduation I’ll ever get to see.”
Addict With a Pen 