creative writing

by

Begin Again

There is a voice inside me. It varies in volume but is ever constant. This voice is reminding me that I am on a journey. I am not done. I am not only who I was, but so much more I have forgotten and not yet discovered. 

Begin Again.

This is something I hear from deep within my body. my heart, my mind, my soul. When I hear these words I can become so powerful if I give myself the moment to say them out loud to myself. Honor these words and magic happens.

Begin Again. 

I drop the heavy load of guilt, shame, and judgement. I release the joy and pleasure into the universe. I make a contract with myself that there is no one beginning and no single end. 

Begin Again. 

I am vulnerable and meek. I am quiet and cautious. I am observing the world and all its power. I am taking notes. I  study the grace and strength of all around me. I take a pause with rage and anger. I am gentle and loving. I am pensive and full. 

Begin Again.

I am vibrating and steaming and boiling to the top. I can hear nothing but the sound of my own emotions. I spin with the force of generations of earth, wind, and fire. I am infinite in my powerful rage and fervor. I shake the core of my own existence with an outward tsunami of love and raw emotion. I am unstoppable until I am done and empty.

Begin Again. 

this voice can purify me. It can subdue me. It has the ability to motivate me to move mountains. If I listen and repeat, anything is possible. It is all inside waiting for me to breathe and release the transformative power. It is in me. I breathe. I believe. 

Begin Again. 

 

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by

Everything Changes

The throng of commuters felt thicker this morning. Even on a crisp autumn morning, June was stifled in the woolen embrace of hundreds of people shuffling to work. She was worried she would be late. Worried that she forgot something. Worried she wore the wrong blouse – it might say the wrong thing- give the wrong image. A older gentleman with salt and pepper hair and a hint of cologne bumped into her arm with his bag. She looked at him and away almost immediately. She began to rifle through her handbag while speed-walking in the dispersing crowd. She needed to check the address again. It gives her calm, comfort to check directions almost every 30 seconds. Although she has always done this, she has never taught herself to stop burying the directions into her handbag after each glance. This has become a habit, a ritual of sorts.

She feels the scratchy torn paper in between her fingers and begins to raise it out like a crab in a net. June looks casually into her hand and is sent falling forward onto her hands and one knee.

The stream of onlookers diverge around her and a family stops to help her stand. She thanks them and lush faced assures them she is alright. She has to stoop back over to collect the contents of her purse that have toppled onto pavement. Her pen, her sunglasses and some papers. June scoops them up and notices an unfamiliar piece of stationary erratically folded stuck to her directions. She glides her self to a potted plant to put herself back together. She throws everything into her bag and looks at the stationary. It is expensive and somewhat personalised. She can feel the weight and texture of its fibers. She strokes a fingertip on the soft emerald piping around the edges.

June opens the paper to see the green trail and smooths it out on her leg. It is not the entire sheet. It has been hastily torn and crumpled. There are smudges of words along the ripped edge. All that can be read is:

Please stop waiting to hear “I’m sorry”. Get on with your life. I have.

The letter was not originally intended for June but it’s sentiment drove a stake through her chest and nailed her to that very spot. She looked around and studied the faces of those around her. Was anyone visibly shattered from this as well? She saw a young man reading something small in his hand and she thought for a moment to approach and ask if this was his. The she saw him remove a granola bar from the wrapping he was reading and toss it in the bin.

Please stop waiting to hear “I’m sorry”. Get on with your life. I have.

She read it again. This time the words pressed into her heart. She winced and looked around again. Who would write this? It is so cold and insensitive. She felt such sadness for whomever received this note and cast it away. June then began to wonder if this was a section of a letter purposefully torn off and discarded or had this been the talisman carried and fingered for affirmation. Was this the best or the worst section of the letter?

Time seemed to slow down for June. She leaned back against the brick encasement of perennials and sighed. She wiped a bead of sweat from her chest and listened to her own pulse. The sounds of the street morphed into a blanket around her feet. The directions to her appointment were cast aside on top of her bag and she took them in her shaking hand and crumpled them tightly into a strong fist.

Please stop waiting to hear “I’m sorry”. Get on with your life. I have.

This was written for her, she knew it. No she didn’t have the entire letter and no she didn’t recognise the handwriting but she felt it was meant for her. June felt a bubble of anger rise in her throat. “Get on with your life.” Who would be so brash to imply she wasn’t living it up? She thought of her father all smug and disapproving.  June was griping the letter so tightly in her hands she felt the paper shutter as if it would explode.

With a new fevered gate she trudges her way through the current. June steps off the curb, she raises her right hand clutching the letter to ward off a exuberant cabbie. She let him know she is not to be trifled with today. June has been rewired and is heading directly to her appointment with no doubts, no need to check or recheck anything. She flicks her hair back and shoves the letter into her pocket.

*response to daily prompt: everything changes

by

To C.Fisher on a chilly afternoon

hi.

it’s cold.
i’m sitting in a lobby
near a very large revolving door
occasionally i get a wash
of cold city fumed air
across me then followed by a force of heat
from the guy, seated to my right, breathing
don’t be mad
but this made me think of you
i miss that smile
i wonder what you’re doing,
I see this woman in a puffy black winter coat
held together with a pink cashmere scarf
draped over a pair of mustard yellow sweatpants
cant help but think
if you were here
this moment, this part of my life
would be a poem.
by

Winds that Change…again

Yesterday I wrote. I wrote a sentence in the morning that went like this:

Today I was greeted by cold blasts that felt good, really good.

And then I had to go. But I returned to my sentence a couple of hours later and wrote for 40 minutes straight. I felt proud and “back” in my groove. I hit publish. A few moments later while rereading, I wanted to adjust some syntax..I hit edit and BLAM…everything disappeared but that first sentence fragment…not even the whole sentence. I panicked. I tried to get it back.

Finally I resolved my self to the winds of change and let it go. I deleted my “Winds of Change” post. I closed the laptop and shrugged. It had been six months since my last post.

Then, this morning, I got an email from a friend. She is reading my blogs…could even be reading right now. I thought of her and her unwavering support. I opened my laptop and here we are…it is that simple in life. Choices surround us every second. I may not like what is being blown at me but I can change my reaction.

Yes. It feels good, really good.