A Familiar Place

My fourth poem for my Poetry class. The assignment was to write about a place that was very personal to us.

For eleven years

I had walked through that green door

into a foyer, with scratched wooden floors

to yell out to my family that I was home from school.

The carpet on the stairs

was the first thing your eyes rested upon.

Worn down, stained, flattened by our feet,

ascending to the more personal parts of our lives.

The house had problems.

It desperately needed a new roof

and the paint could most surely use a fresh coat.

The possible buyers noted all of this and complained.

They asked us questions.

Why does the air-conditioning not work?

Did you put in this crown molding yourselves?

Why is this kitchen painted bright orange?

They laughed at all the problems they saw.

The beige, empty living room

was naked other than the brick fireplace.

Even now, as I close my eyes, I can see myself,

nine-years old, in that house for the very first time.

They just don’t understand.

They see rooms, a roof, repairs to be done.

They will never understand that the walls

tell Bible stories at night, in my father’s voice.

They will not hear the sound

of our Christmas presents being torn open.

They will never know that my sister’s voice

still sings in the dark, dirty chimney of the fireplace,

as a familiar love song.

Waterfront Park

I wrote this a long time ago, but it fits the assignment this week for my Poetry class so I'm turning it in. Why not share?

The swings are always full at Waterfront Park.

People pile on all together, to swing by the view

of Charleston’s harbor and the Ravenel Bridge.

Many people have cameras hanging on their necks,

eagerly awaiting the next dolphin to surface

or to snap the next famous photo of the Yorktown.

Some people ignore the view all together

and frolic like children in the Pineapple fountain

or in the water spouts that I think look like a compass.

Other people find themselves busy playing¹

a game of soccer or Frisbee in the greenway,

their dogs running alongside them, panting.

Those apartments that create a wall behind the park,

they are very expensive, and the people who live there

probably don’t enjoy the view that they pay for

as much as they used to when they first moved in.

Such a shame and waste of thousands.

There’s a boardwalk at the other end of the park.

Many people don’t even know its there.

It juts out into the Cooper River, wood on wood.

I have some good memories there that I can’t recreate.

By God, I wish I could.

By God, I wish people understood.

Bear Attack

This is another assignment for my Fiction class. The idea was to write something very hot (dramatic and climactic), but in a way that is cold (detached and "not fully there"). Also, the first sentence of the story had to be, "When I looked up, I saw the bear". It could only be a page in length.

When I looked up, I saw the bear. It ran at him so fast that I couldn’t help but admire the speed of the large creature. How could something so fat and heavy run so awfully fast? Its speed gave my husband no time to defend himself and also no time for me to do anything to help him. My arm instinctively reached out to my son beside me and pushed him into the tent. As soon as I did, the first splatter of blood hit my face, some flying into the flame of the fire we had just started for very early breakfast.

One giant paw had flown through the air and landed on the side of my husband’s face, claws ripping through his flesh. His high cheekbones became clearly visible, white bone against red blood. I halfway watched the scene while gathering our cooking gear. I could save our stuff, even if I could not save my husband. I looked up again to see my spouse trying to kick the bear off of him with his skinny legs, his left hand reaching up to try and hold the skin onto his face. I couldn’t decide if I was nauseated or intrigued.

The bear grew more angry as my husband kicked him violent with his metal hiking boots and used his weapon of a paw to plow right through my husband’s shin, snapping the leg clean in two. I heard a scream erupt from my husband’s throat, but I lost its sound when I zipped up the tent and felt around in the dark shelter for my son’s body. I heard a few more roars from the bear and some painful grunts from my husband before all went silent. I waited a good while before I exited the tent once again to see if Richard was still alive.

He was very still and eerily quiet. His neck was bent sideways, skin dangling off the bone into the dirt below. His shirt was stained red and his body was mangled in a way that I had never seen before. I wasn’t sure how to feel.

“Go get in the car,” I told my son. “It’s time to go home now.”

Christmas Angst

First writing assignment for my fiction class! Trust me, I did not completely come up with the topic...

It was Christmas Day and warm, because this was Charleston; we were driving downtown to meet up with the ambulance that transported my father. My mind continued to replay all the times that I told him to eat better, to go to the gym with me, to just try and be healthier. I was so lost in thought that I did not notice the abundant amount of red lights that my mother was running through. She gripped the steering wheel tightly, knuckles white as bones, tears streaming down her face. My brother had begged her to let him drive, claiming that she was not in the state to do so, but a wife’s determination is never to be tested.

Pulling into the oddly-shaped horseshoe of Roper, my mother threw the van in park before bolting out and towards the electric doors. Luckily my brother had enough sense to get the keys and hand them to the valet, but I, like my mother, was also in complete focus of getting to my dad as soon as possible.

I thought about the look on his face when it hit him. His eyes dilated and looked dead into mine as he grasped his chest. I barely heard him gasp before my own heart rate accelerated from adrenaline. For some odd, morbid reason, I expected this to happen at some point. But that didn’t change the fear in my stomach or the angst in my heart at seeing him in pain. At that moment, the Christmas turkey in the oven and the unopened presents under the fake, green tree suddenly seemed so frivolous in comparison to him and his condition.

I let my brother, a third-year medical student, perform the needed treatment on my father before the ambulance arrived. As I backed up to give him room, I finally heard myself sob. I reached up to my face and realized that I was crying. I could not bear to lose him.

What Love Is (For Me)

Love is
the wagging of a tail
happily greeting you
at the door of your home
after a long day at work.

Love is
the gentle kiss on the head
from a loving husband
of twenty-seven years
before he says goodnight.

Love is
the gas that is burned
on the road to a friend’s house
to comfort them
in the late night hours.

Love is
the sound of a text
being typed and sent
under the desk in class
just to say, “I love you”
one more time today.

Love is
an email from your father
telling you he is proud
of the woman you’ve become
for no other reason
than love.

Love is
heartbreaking pain
when the man you love
with all of your heart
says that you are not at all
what he wants for a wife.

Love is
painfully stepping aside
when that man you love
asks for your best friend’s
hand in marriage
and she accepts.

Love is
a joyful heart-flutter
and a painful angst
that we all crave
and want to experience.

The Charleston Library Society

It was sunset and I had gone back in time.
I had never been in the room before,
but I felt like I had seen it a million times.
The large windows let soft, fading sunlight flood into the room;
the arch above each window almost seemed celestial.
The teal blinds came to a half star shape on the top
and for some reason reminded me of Floridian flamingos.

There seemed to be a window on the ceiling, too.
Light fixtures hung down between each pane,
lighting the room to bring your attention downwards,
yet the windows on the ceiling made me think
that my attention was supposed to somehow go up.

The marble of the original, dated black and white floors
were darker than they probably once were back in the day,
their age becoming more evident on the surface.
Even that carpet under that table there is rather dated.
It has faded into a dark gold-ish brown, the edges fringed.
I wonder how many feet have walked upon these things.

The original structures are still there, too, holding strong.
The old fashioned library system of skinny staircases;
one going down into a mysterious basement below,
the other going up into a strangely giant bookshelf –
or is that simply just a rather small wall?

Portraits hang all around the room, old and dated.
They immortalize the famous strangers that the brush strokes create.
They are posed in a way that tells me nothing of who they
 are,
what success they accomplished, or why it even matters.
There are a lot of busts of these kinds of people, too,
seemingly copper, but I don't know.
Either way, they are black and seem awfully old like this
 setting.

The old desk there sits just like it probably always has.
I feel like there is an absent body in the space behind it.
Some sort of secretary or librarian should be behind its 
greatness.
Maybe with some glasses falling down on her nose,
her hair pulled back loosely in a bun, a few strands around 
her face,
her Mary Jane flats with a black scuff on one side
from where she rushed to save a falling book that afternoon.
Where were the rest of the people that belonged here?

Looking out the door, I saw the distinct view
of a house's sideway porch and a patch of tall sea grass.
But a tourist walked by and made me forget it all.
And then I saw a stain of mildew on the corner of the
 ceiling.
It seems that everything comes to an end.

But I heard a wine bottle open, the cork popping off,
and the smell of alcohol invaded my senses.
Which time was I in again?

Owls

Have you seen the owls –
the wooden blue ones –
that hang up with the branches of the trees,
in the Cistern, hidden away, like real owls?

I think they were hung there
for the people like me
who come to the Cistern looking for something,
and we find it in the serenity of its beauty.

I laid in the bright green grass –
 have you ever looked at Randolf Hall
from the angle of laying down right in front of it?
It makes it look a lot bigger and more historic.

I look at those curving stairways
and I’m taken back to the early 1700’s.
I imagine a sepia image of students climbing
up those stairs to become a lawyer or doctor.
All men.

 I wonder when the owls were hung.
What if they were not hung at all,
and rather, they are real owls that are like me
and they love the Cistern too much to leave?

One day I will walk over
this thing we all call the cistern.
I will receive a big piece of paper telling me
that I am now free to leave and go get a job.

 But maybe I won’t go.
I might climb up those steps,
but not walk over the Cistern at all.
Instead, I will fly up into the trees and perch myself
in the branches, with my family, the owls.

Legends

They don’t make people into legends now.

I don’t know if its because it hasn’t been long enough

for one to develop,

or if people just aren’t as special anymore.

The latter seems rather sad.

What makes a legend a legend?

Did they do something that solved world hunger?

Or did they do something to make their mother smile?

Both would’ve changed the world for someone.

So how do I become a legend?

Do I have to find the cure for cancer?

Or make my father cry in pride?

I want to change the world,

at least for someone.

Addie

Addie,

No matter where I sit and read,

you look different.

From this angle,

I feel as if I’m in a museum.

But in that angle,

I feel as if I’m in basement.

That amazes me a lot.

Addie,

Sometimes,

when I come to you at weird times,

you feel weird, too.

4:00 is so different from 11:00.

I know I come different, too,

but you seem to change a lot.

Addie,

The other day,

it was raining.

And when I came, you were so calm.

You were so peaceful.

You made me feel like I was floating.

You took me to a different world.

I liked that world a lot.

Addie,

I walked over the cistern today.

It was different.