The Dead Can’t Talk. It’s Time To Listen To Survivors.

Drifting Through – Listen, really listen

Drifting Through

Sexual assault is like a death. A death of who you would have been. Who you were before. It is a violation of the body and the mind, but most profoundly, the soul. Many of us survive by allowing that part of us, the innocent part, to die.

I died many years ago, that part of me. There were moments when I thought he would kill me. And in a way, he did. He killed the little girl who danced instead of walked. He killed the little girl who looked at the world in wonder. I could have held on to her and let her live, but I had to let her go.

This is how I survived what he did to me. I was three, maybe four. I can’t be sure because the details of mundane facts are secondary to the horrors I can’t escape. The date, the season, his…

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Yes

TheFeatheredSleep – A moment, a gesture, and so much more

TheFeatheredSleep

She has

Russia folded in her eyes

The girl she once was

In balletic poise and straight long neck

She carries her mother’s lips in disapproval and mirth

The tan of her father come from outside, asking for iced hibiscus

Her long hands are her own

They play instruments and lovers

With careful solitary stroke

She has the curl of her grandmother crossing brow in stray wave

A sad gaze into ether, when you catch her off guard

And I am drawn to the shy fruiting shape of her mouth

As we talk and artfully avoid

What is undisclosed in space existing

Between strangers, then become friends

Not yet more

Will she understand? Unbutton one permission

Without need to drink liquor or gather foreign courage

From the same source we all go

Unsure and burning up with tiptoeing fever

I imagine

Stepping over the divide

Between her serenity and mine

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Long John Silver’s Revenge – Twittering Tales #103 – 25 September 2018

A tiny tale from Jan Malique with a classic character.

Strange Goings On In The Shed

Photo by PDPhotos @ Pixabay.com

A splendiferous challenge from Kat Myrman for Twittering Tales.

This is an embittered tale, full of pathos and something dark.

See that tree. Every shoe’s been pinched from his shop. He can see it from his window, but can’t do anything about it. The damned cur!

The homicidal cobbler finally met his nemesis. He took my leg, and I took his business, down, down, into the Abyss.

John! Time for your medication.

(280 characters)

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#tbt Broken Angel

Christine Ray wonders on seeing a broken halo.

Brave & Reckless

His broken halo

still gleamed dull gold

His haunted eyes

kaleidoscope of

all that he had seen

I could taste the loss

in his tears

the weariness written on his skin

like ancient runes

but there was hope in his kiss

that made me wonder

if I could be his salvation

at least for this one broken night

© 2017 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All rights Reserved

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Storms Don’t Apologize

Stephanie Bennett-Henry – When a storm blows away, let it go.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry

Sometimes we forget the storm that made someone else drown, because we were breathing just fine as we walked away with memory selective and shoulder blades as cold as a knife. Keep walking. Stop looking back after the storm settled to see if maybe you can conjure up some more thunder in my sky, love. You are a stranger because you want to be. My roots… are where they have always been. I dug every one up, studied it like the back of my hand, replanted it solid and it’s growing as beautiful as it always did, only stronger. I have no blades in my garden. I took them all out of my back, let the blood spill out like calling the name of loyalty, and your voice didn’t echo back anywhere. I own every seed of pain rooted in my bones since birth. Put down the shovel that keeps…

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Sheldon’s greeting.

LuckyOtter is greeted

Lucky Otters Haven

Rolling around crazily in the gravel driveway is the special way Sheldon greets us when we come home.   Sorry about the poor video quality.

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PART 10

Samantha Lucero continues the story with an intrepid investigator.

samantha lucero

DETECTIVE

The light left when daddy died. The world started to get a grain over it; dimmer and dimmer went her waking life, until the doctor said it was all in her mind. Migraine auras, they’d said, without the migraine part sometimes, blind in this eye one day, blind in the other tomorrow. Get some sleep. Get some help.

Sometimes she’d think she saw something out of the corner of her eye, a loitering figure, a hunched posture, or she’d catch the heavy scent of an unbearable perfume, the kind that festers in the throat, the kind you can taste.

Everything was too loud, everything had a strong smell that made her head hurt, and sometimes she never wanted to leave the dark loam of her room. With all the lights out, she could imagine what it would be like to die.

She understood what it meant now: light of…

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The Music Changed Me

Stephanie Bennett-Henry – Changing with the music

Stephanie Bennett-Henry

You found me wounded,

but stitched up, whole,

baggage like everyone,

shoved down deep

where it never touched me with you.

You left me with wounds ripped open,

brought back to life, made new like the

first time each wound ever bled.

I was never more raw.

I was never more unguarded before,

fully comfortable in my own skin,

believing that I could take on the world

with wide eyes and a heart that never

knew how not to trust.

I was stupid.

Or maybe we can call it naive.

Silly me.

I never loved like that before you,

never had someone love me so deeply

until you did…

and honestly, I am changed forever.

I cannot ever go back.

Do you understand?

I cannot ever be the same.

The way your shoulder made such a

sharp turn, froze over so cold,

it cut me… still cuts me…

it will…

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Starlight

TheFeatheredSleep – A love unchanged by time and change

TheFeatheredSleep

If I met you now

I’d fall in love with you all over

though you are much changed

as I am

we have gone through the fall of leaves

seen ourselves turn from green to brown and then to silver

with each tread something is lost, something is found

the people we were at first

are gone as the flowers in that vase will be soon be dry and thrown

to return to earth and become something similar and altered

when I look back I cannot remember exactly who I was

though you are always clear in my mind like

a pure magnification

I see your unwrinkled brow and the folly of your youth

bandy-legged and laughing, your chin thrown back

I smell the moments that touched us then

and became unrecognizable bed fellows with

a bitter taste

perhaps you can only stay so long

dancing to the same song

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Exile

TheFeatheredSleep weaves images. Swim in them.

TheFeatheredSleep

The discordant tread

of underwater swimmer

you stand waving at strangers

whose kindness is

a white egyptian cotton sheet

gardenias scenting night

as unmated mockingbird

sounds his exile

you give blessings for rain

a day without pain

the carved majesty of mist draped moon

murmuring between

the nimble fingers of trees

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