It caught us unawares. It was unexpected, a summer shower that cooled off all but our desire. My dress, ivory with an array of tiny purple flowers was thin, and saturated with the deluge …
I am proud and honored to have two poems published in an anthology on strong women. The anthology, published in June of 2022, includes poetry from across the globe, from females and males alike.
Here is an excerpt from one of my poems:
Choosing Myself
Love, unmarred by time or quarrel, is patient and blind, to red flags fluttering in the wind. It’s easy to lose yourself, be diminished by another’s perception and resentment. Days turn to months, to years; you exist moment to moment, hoping if you try hard enough it will get better. It never does.
The anthology can be found on Amazon at the following link:
In the silence of the room vinyl crackles like some distant message over a wireless radio. The piano plays and shadows fall upon me, the wall, the day. Twilight beckons, with fingers of light, its seduction of me is complete …
Some labyrinths are found in our minds.
Instead of leafy verdant cover,
binding as steel but soft
beneath the fingers we trail over it,
this boundary is rough. Hewn
from thickets grown of time
and pain. Notched ridges made smooth,
relentless touch a marker of my journey.
I seek reprieve
and escape from what I’ve known.
Prudence mislaid, I stumble
through the warren of my thoughts …
Meeting me for the first time, you’d be unsurprised to find I love books, baking, and even considered starting a business that combined the two. One thing, though, I doubt anyone would associate with me is this: I love a good cocktail. Specifically, I love mixing a good cocktail.
I’ve never been what you’d call a big drinker. Though my twenties were full of outings with friends, pub crawls, and dinner parties, I was considered a lightweight. In those days, the beverages imbibed were far from sophisticated and meant only to pack a punch with as little money outlay as possible. Even in my thirties and forties, it was rare that anything more potent than wine or beer passed my lips.
Then came my divorce, singlehood, and a desire for change. It was time to shake things up — literally and figuratively. For me — the person least likely to have a liquor cabinet — the ritual of the Friday night cocktail was born …
The mind becomes a ticking time bomb, silence settling like a fog. Questions have no answers and the weight of every one of them smothers what you do have. You cannot breathe, for the journey your mind takes you on a whirlwind of emotions you run down rabbit holes better suited to a tale of Alice and the person you wish to be is masked by this temporary madness …
Published on Medium: P.S. I Love You for Poetry Sunday
We the People
was our birth,
our beginning. But, we are no longer We the People. How long has it been
since we could claim to be We
instead of Them or Us?
We the People
is an idea we fetishize,
placing it on a pedestal
when it is meant to be read
cover to cover,
intended to be worn
until it slides over us
like a second skin,
covering us in a common identity …
Published on Medium: P.S. I Love You for Poetry Sunday