May 2013
3 posts
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Conversation
Sometimes… Sometimes at night when I lay down to sleep I hear thousands of voices. There are those who would say that’s crazy. I just say I’m listening. We all need someone to listen. Even if we’re just muttering under our breath. And know that if you are muttering under your breath, that means you’re breathing. Sometimes… Sometimes simply breathing is the most important...
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Haunted
“I was watching a TV show the other day about hauntings, okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She continued earnestly. “People were talking about how they would wake up only to find handshaped bruises on their bodies, or various scratches and cuts and no clue how they got there,” she said. “So they believed ghosts had attacked them in their sleep.”
...
April 2013
9 posts
11 tags
Fit
Where do I fit? Certainly not in this body, which is too soft and too easily injured. And this body certainly not in these clothes—they’re too tight. Once maybe and maybe once again in the future. Maybe… Maybe? I’d like once to transition into something more. I’d like it to turn into a vow never to be broken. Until death do us part, my body and me. And does this...
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“Perhaps the noblest, private act is the unheralded effort to return: to open our...”
– Mark Nepo
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You There Screaming
You speak loudly. But you think we don’t hear you. So you raise your voice to a yell, anger clawing its way out of your mouth. That’s why your throat is so scratchy, your voice so hoarse. You think we don’t understand you and so you keep screaming and screaming, spitting out shrapnel. Surely we’ll listen to you then. You’ll make us understand.
And you’re...
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“Oh Boston… Oh World… My heart breaks. My prayers are dressed in...”
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The Art of Dance
“You look like you’re searching for something,” I said.
She spun around in circles, took two steps one direction, three steps in another, and her eyes darted here, there, and everywhere. “I am,” she replied, sounding exasperated, “but I don’t know what I’m searching for. I just have this feeling in my gut that I should be looking and so I...
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“We are always getting ready to live, but never living.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
March 2013
20 posts
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An open letter to the world...
Dear citizens of the world who are quick to open their mouths and exclaim “girls and women just need to keep their legs shut”: Please, please, PLEASE think about that phrase before you utter it. You’re automatically chastising girls and women SOLELY for an act that takes two people. In so doing, you are sending a message to boys and men that their actions are inconsequential. So...
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Beautiful
“He called me beautiful,” she said, “but as soon as he said that I felt the exact opposite. Which is funny because before he opened his mouth I felt neither beautiful or ugly. And then he just kept saying it and the more he said it, the more I faded from place and time. And then he took my hand, my hand, and he held onto it like it belonged to him. I looked at it resting in his...
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Prevent Another Steubenville: What All Mothers... →
“Give your son the tools they need to understand that their sexuality is a powerful thing, one that they are solely responsible for. Give them a framework for understanding that sex carries an enormous responsibility, not just to themselves, but to their partners. Does your son know what rape is? Does he know what it means? Does he know that it’s not just creepy smelly guys who hide in...
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Wonder Women
Yesterday the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was reauthorized and signed into law. Today is International Women’s Day. And tomorrow… Who knows what is in store for women tomorrow… But every single day I give thanks to God for the many, many, MANY amazing and wonderful and intelligent and compassionate and determined and hard working and gracious and witty and loving women in...
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Grandmama
I smell my grandmother on my hands and that sounds strange, especially considering she passed away over ten years ago. But all I can think of is that she is truly here with me right now, at this moment, holding my hands. And I love that.
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“I love Jesus, gay people, adoption, and rearranging furniture. In the interest...”
– Glennon Doyle Melton
Yesss! Ditto!
February 2013
15 posts
8 tags
Lamentation
I am a dreamer. And this…this is both a blessing and a curse. But right now it seems to be more of a curse because the world I dream of is so vastly different than the world I am in.
I don’t know if I can even describe the world I dream of, but the world I am in is filled with daily heartbreak of various proportions… The life sucking monotony of an 8 to 5. $3500 vet bills,...
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I’m trying something a little...
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“The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You...”
– Stephen Sondheim
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Take Flight
For a long time—a long, long time—there was an omission of all sound, but I wouldn’t call it silence. It was quieter than that. Quieter because there was so much to be said, but not a single word found its wings. (I call that a side effect of violence.) Eventually a brave whisper couldn’t take the hurt and so it began to chirp and flap its fluffy little feathered...
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Trash to Treasure
“He couldn’t even bother to throw me away,” she said with hurt dripping from every word like a slow snow melt. “He was careless and just let go of me without any thought. Littering me into the night. But I suppose he hadn’t given me much thought before, so why should he then? Why should he…?” She bit her lip and fidgeted with her hair. “I was simply...
January 2013
12 posts
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“I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind, and when it did, it scattered a...”
– Andrea Gibson, “The Nutritionist”
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Release
When sleep comes and settles into the seams of your eyes for the evening, quietly sealing away
the chaos of the world,
I hope it opens up the doors
painted in red, yellow, blue, and green
to your similarly vivid dreams.
So that in sleep you are awakened
to the truth you have desperately stored
in a forgotten nook of your heart.
I pray you release yourself
and reach in then out
into the endless...
