I'm like a pencil;
sometimes sharp,
most days
well-rounded,
other times
dull or
occasionally
broken.
Still I write.
j.g. lewis
is a writer/photographer in Toronto.
Month: March 2018
The words often don’t
come easily, and the words
are not always correct. Words
can say so much, but may not
say exactly what is meant,
and the feelings can become
lost in translation. We don’t all
speak the same language, or we
each will talk from a very
different place. Emotions, age,
perspective, and experience
will temper both usage and
understanding. Use caution
when interpreting the meaning
of a sentence, statement, or
stanza. Words can confuse.
Words are reused. Words can
heel or words will hurt; some
will do neither. Words will
whisper or words can shout, it
will wholly depend on the
subject you are talking about.
Words can live and words can
thrive. Words are real, in the
context they are supplied,
dependent upon the pressure
when applied. Words can break
your passion, shatter glances,
hold back traffic, or fall out of
fashion, but still carry a blunt
truth. Words need to be heard,
and words need to be read.
Those unspoken words will not
make up for the ones left unsaid.
Speak up. Speak now, or forever
hold your peace. Words can mean
as much, or as little, as you need.
03/04/2018 j.g.l.
by Stormy Peterson
I learned early on, I’m the kind of bitch people don’t worry about. . . probably because I was raised by one, or maybe because very little escapes my attention, and I rarely find myself playing the fool.
I don’t coo, and giggle like a baby-doll come to life, I don’t have a tiny voice and a vacant look on my face that begs someone else to ‘write my story for me,’ and I definitely don’t play small to make other people more comfortable.
I have a big, loud mouth, and a head full of ideas that I believe should be used for more than just adding to the collective cacophony of noise.
When I was a young girl, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to be the classic damsel in distress that the quintessential, handsome gentleman would rush to save from whatever peril I found myself in. But I was different, and always had been. I didn’t cry when I was scared, I had a calm, clear head during emergencies, I didn’t shake at the flood of adrenaline coursing through my system, I didn’t shrink from blood (at most, my worst thoughts were of staining my clothes).
I was not the woman from the black and white movie who needed to be slapped in order to ‘snap out of it,’ and I certainly never wilted into the nearest man’s hands in a dramatic back-of-hand-to-forehead-faint. No, that woman was never going to be me. And if she was, it would require the abandonment of everything it had already meant to be me, in my most natural state. Frankly, not only had I never quite learned how to be that fake, but it sounded like an awful lot of work for a payout that didn’t seem equivalent, or greater to the required price.
Not interested in being short-changed, my days continued on as they had before, with me growing each day (more in feistiness than size, I’m sure) until I overheard the conversation between my parents after one of my dad’s friends was killed in a workplace accident, leaving behind his widow to now navigate life on her own, newly discovered, terms.
“That poor woman,” my dad said, “I just don’t know what she’s going to do without him; she needs so much help, and doesn’t know how to take care of anything. It wouldn’t be as hard on you because I’m gone all the time, anyway. I don’t worry about you.”
“Yeah, I know,” my mother quipped. “I have to do everything myself, so I just pretend like you’re dead, it makes it easier to get through all of the tasks on my own without being perpetually furious about it.”
This was a wife who, for a time, slept with a pistol in a sliding compartment in her headboard in case anyone from the rabble of weirdos, and peeping Tom’s swarming our home decided to up the ante, and force entry in the late night hours. Our houseful of women left to fend for ourselves which comprised of two teenage daughters, a runt (me), a toy poodle, and a mother with no concept of backing down. She didn’t have the luxury of catching the vapors every time a man couldn’t magically solve our problems.
And so it is, my sisters and I never learned to be women who would trade our souls for the illusion of a man’s safety, and all of the counterfeit comforts included. I’ve seen her, though. I know who she is, and I’m not judging her, I’m wondering which part(s) of herself she had to kill to get here. This is the place where she washes her husband’s patronizing insults down with another gulp of boxed-wine bought in bulk (which is incredibly economical, and an obvious choice I finally understand considering how much fluid it must take to drown oneself every day) that has become her home; her cage. Her prison.
Ever the perfect hostess, she (again) offers me another glass, secretly hoping I’ll get drunk enough not to notice, or remember, her humiliation. It’s not just that of her husband’s actions, but how she betrayed — and continues to betray — herself, for what we’ve been told we all really want.
I don’t accept, and we sit awkwardly in her shame.
She is painfully aware of how aware I am of it all, and part of me aches for her. Do we both know the money, the property, the expensive gifts, jewelry, cars, new family, and upgraded husband are meaningless when you’re dead inside?
Does she ever visit her own grave? Did she leave any markers behind to find it again?
We can pretend that heartbreak and shattered dreams are avoidable, but they truly are commonplace happenings that are not exclusive to one type of person, and yet each one of us has the power to decide whether we will be defined, destroyed, or just slightly detoured by them. Cloaking ourselves in the bubble-wrap of artificial-stability does nothing but suffocate.
“Don’t be delicate, be vast and brilliant.”
-Shinedown
©2018 Stormy Peterson
Stormy Peterson is a fine artist cultivated in the foothills of the Olympic Peninsula, believer of Bigfoot with a background in apparel and textiles merchandising, and design. Come hang out with The Longshoreman’s Daughter herself, at http://stormaculus.blogspot.com/
“I can’t keep up the calls”
I feel “Sadness..
Because some people will think ..
She is hard on me., forgotten time..
Why can’t she,
See, or even “Feel with me!?”
But that’s not “truth–
I can say, with no regret
My heart is “Occupied”
Our souls have met..
I am in Love
And Love is in me..
Which feels like, a constant Shelter..
Home.
I have to follow “My Path”..
To live My.. Life
I need my “Freedom”
to follow my –Soul..
Time ..
I need so much..
Time is “Rude on me, I must
follow “My Heart”
I’ve tried to live a life
for “All..
Consuming all of my heart beats,
To fulfill my goals for being kind ,
“A Heart Wearing Soul”
All at once..
To give, and show..
That I Am ..
Nice .. I try to say,
In so many ways,
That I can care
That I can hope..
That I can love
That I can grow..
I Am worth full.
Sur ma route..
Yes I know
Just to Be ..
And breathe
And feel ..Free
Unconditionally.
Just like that
To give, and take..
And letting my heart rest,
where it wants to go..
Where it belongs,
My Shelter .. “Home”
Where it wants to stay..
“I can’t keep up the calls”
But need you to know..
You are worth full,
in your own way
We all need to sing our own song,
That’s the beauty of Life..
To care
To hope..
To love
To grow..
You have to follow
the beauty of your Soul.
Your path, and don’t think at All..
Trust in the rhythm of your Heart
Beat.
And believe that one day,
you Will
say; ” I can’t keep up the calls..”
@2018 Lisette Kiene
Lisette Kiene lives in Gouda, The Netherlands.
Lisette is a graphic designer & owner of a Creative Soul.
She is a believer of an endless destination, naturally.
She transforms thoughts and whisperings into writing.
She follows her own melody.
