This is writing that I have had in literary journals:
Remember (Tabula Rasa: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF MEDICAL HUMANITIES. VOLUME VII. 2013.)
Sometimes I wonder when the Earth will decide it’s
my turn
to line up underneath it, next to other
bone-ridden boxes.
Or will I be ashes
freed from some loved ones hand,
writhing with the wind,
fighting to mix in with the
dirt and waters, a
final vow to be part of it all
even in death?
If I write my will, will that further prepare me?
Will the tangible things I leave behind mean more than the risks I was
willing to take?
And what would my sister choose to remember me by?
This piano I’ll leave her, or
the songs we used to sing?
A Trusting Heart (Tetrahedra, Volume XXII. 2013.)
I never understood why so many women I knew hated all men after being hurt by one. I thought a new man meant a new start. I thought their pessimism was unrealistic as they dismissed every man as the same based on past experiences or website statistics. But now I get it. Being hurt one time is sometimes enough to ruin it for everyone. I despise my once trusting heart. The never questioning things. The often times I should have used caution. Only naive minds try thinking with their hearts without wondering what it might cost them and then they miss the signs transpiring. And that's how liars get by, you see? Because sometimes a heartbeat can be so loud that it drowns out the mind entirely. And even if I felt I could trust a man again, even to the greatest extent, there would always be a question of intent. Yours was not evident until I walked in that day unexpected, not expecting to find you undressed and in my mind, one question. Why didn't you hold my heart on a pedestal as high as you held her naked body straddled over yours? Her frail body, so hungry for the love that was mine, ours, but no more. She won and I didn't even know we were at war. Still I couldn't help but think she looked more beautiful than ever before; her hands planted on your chest as she cried out for more and on her wrist, a friendship bracelet that matched the one that I wore.
Mirror (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
Her name is Rosie, but my grandpa called her Rose. Some of my family used to joke and call us twins because as I got older, I began to resemble the way she looked when she was younger. I never saw it but I didn't deny it either; she was beautiful.
My grandmother, with her yellow-toned skin and brownish red hair like autumn leaves changing, was always changing. A laugh could quickly turn into angry words, rolling off of her tongue like a flame, catching your skin and eating it right down to your heart. Projection, I'm guessing from a lifetime of rejection. Maybe I got it worse because I was like a direct reflection. Reminding her of a history she thought she left, and maybe it still hurt because she never got the lesson. Not enough tears fell for the scars to lessen. To the white kids who spit on her from school buses as she walked to school, she was too black. To her family and friends always teasing her, she was too light, and wIth the changing times she thought that I had it easier. But things weren't always bad between me and her.
I still remember those Sunday mornings I watched her put on blue eyeliner and red lipstick as we got ready for church. One day she started showing me how to do the same. "Not too much," she'd say. Every Sunday morning we were late. I still remember those late nights she'd stay up waiting for me to come home. There was always an expression of relief on her tired face when I walked through the door. She couldn't stop me from going out with friends and she also couldn't stop herself from worrying. I remember my grandmother trying to teach me how to be feminine. But in a state of rebellion, I dressed and acted more like my brothers and started hanging out with their friends. That didn't last long and I became like a girl again. Over the years I slowly began to grow into my own, mixed with pieces of each generation before me. I became myself by taking the parts of my grandmother, so deeply ingrained in me, that weren't working and left them where my tears fell, and she and I became a little more free; and the parts I loved, I decided to keep. It was the good memories I decided to keep.
"Who are you?" my grandmother asked me one day. My own grandmother. This woman I've known all my life, and lived with more than half of it. We stared at each other in equal confusion, but for different reasons. "Who am I? I'm Ashley," I told her. My mouth stopped explaining but my heart kept on. "The one you let get away with almost anything; the one you used to let go through your drawers of make-up like I was looking for treasure, letting me take whatever I wanted; the one whose good grades you were always proud of; It's me, your oldest granddaughter."
But even then, not even the tears seeping from my heart, not even my hopeful energy could mend whatever it was that fell apart in her memory. Born to her own daughter, I still somehow became more like a long lost friend she would never see again. I am a stranger to her. Still I looked in her eyes hoping she would see me and remember me, her "twin." I kept looking even after it was clear she wouldn't. Because if she didn't remember me, she might remember herself in this mirror I was trying to create. She might remember who she was, and that would have been enough for me.
The First Time (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
you're slipping away
in and out of women, of consciousness
losing count, lost beginning
unable to comprehend
and put names to faces, they all become faceless
as all that begins to matter is what's below the waist
you fill them to fill the void, try to get back what was taken
and it's easy to avoid when your heart is racing
because it feels too good, but when it's over
you're the same, and
you think this time you're closer
next time will leave you painless
but more shame is all that is waiting in line
as you get farther from your first time
trying to change your first time
because I bet you imagined it'd be with someone your own age
someone with whom it was a mutual exchange
but she was old enough to be your mother back then
she was old enough to be your mother because she was
your mother's friend
decided you were cute and that when you were of age
she'd have her way
but she didn't even wait until your
eighteenth birthday
and you didn't have any say
still, as you talk about it now, you laugh out loud in a proud way
like it was okay
but if she were a man and your were a girl, it'd be an outrage
front page
but you don't see it that way
you think it made you a man but it takes more to define it
and you can't move your life forward when at the same time you're
trying to rewind it
denying won't make you forget, not even time will
it's the hurt you have to accept and reconcile with
because the truth is never as ugly as the lies that bind it
there's just so much glitter we use to disguise it
but glitter always falls off and all that's left is what it was hiding
wanting to be brought into the light, and
now it's trying
to free you from this cycle you've been winding
and trapped in
and you would get some closure, some due satisfaction
if you could look at the wrong done and admit that it happened, because
it
did
happen
and after all the crying necessary to move past it
and after the dying of that boy, that moment, stolen that you'll never get back
one day when you remember it, you won't be saddened
because hardly anyone's first time turns out just as they'd imagined
Trying To Die (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
there's residue on the counter where he poured out a small mountain of it
such a perfectionist
he uses his ID card to form lines with the powder as I counted them
one....three.....six
I was happy to be part of something I thought was big
I felt proud of it then
not knowing the damage that would amount in him
he mumbles out loud, something about it won't hurt me and
do I want to try
as he finishes it off before i can reply
it's these times he likes to share too much of his life
telling me things about himself he otherwise wouldn't mention
as each hit slows his inhibition
I feel guilt rising up in my gut like intuition
because my reality is not so twisted
so I make up a reason to leave this self afflicting tradition we invented
and get us out of this state of mind
we walk out and turn off the light
leaving our tears on the bathroom floor to air dry
"here's your dollar" he says
I unroll it and wipe away white dust wondering if it will still spend
he starts to tell me something but it's hard to comprehend
I try making contact but his eyes shoot quick glances across walls
looking at everything but me
pinball machine
and there's stuff spilling out from bottles
spilling out from underneath my bed in excess
i count them
five.....nine.....thirteen
i never noticed
princess and the pea
what should be too much for most is never enough for him
over doing it like overdose
how many times has he come close?
as his drug of choice and his use becomes more intense, I wonder
how did he end up so far from his innocence?
from video games and late night TV
to idolizing dead celebrities
from cracking jokes in the back of the schoolhouse
to airing the crack smell in the bathroom out
I want to look up to him but I don't know how
heroes aren't usually this low down
I wonder how we could have grown up in the same house
but be so different in the way we turned out
what made me choose pen and paper
while he chose rolling papers?
what made me choose the simplicity of faucet water
while he chose the vodka bottle
genetics of an alcoholic father?
what makes me want to live while he looks at life
and decides to not even bother?
he thinks of his past and sees no point in grieving
because you'd spend half of your life changing
the half you'd been leading
and that doesn't make you happy
it just makes you even
he sees it as a waste of time and he's not just trying to get high
mother read between the lines
he's trying to die
A Woman's Struggle (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
women are freer now than thirty, forty, fifty years ago, there's
more opportunity
but we are still not good enough to be considered
autonomous beings
our soft hands that sew, cook, play piano and hold children
are not calloused enough
we have to work like men to be taken seriously or else
be taken advantage of
our anger is unacceptable and if we express it
we are either psycho or on our cycle, so
we repress it, and we
repress it
until it takes the form of anxiety or depression
we sit still and look pretty as we bite down on our aggression
and don't question the hurt
and to lessen the sting
we search to find worth in
material things
we observe the commercials on TV, the magazines
for the next big thing to make us feel like we are someone or
something
fashion is ever changing
once we go blond, dark hair is the new thing
once we get used to our curves, thin is in
and all of the different women we have been has buried the
true thing
young girls are becoming the dolls they used to play with
women are cutting into the bodies they used to be okay with
afraid we are not good enough for the men we lay with
we convince ourselves that there is something better they're gonna find
yet WE condition them to love with their eyes
and there is no boundary line, just go online
how many women are competing with their minds?
we complain that we are only seen as sexual beings but
look at how sexual we are being
claiming there is no respect but we don't object enough to
casual sex
rejecting that voice inside saying, "not yet"
because it sure gets lonely sometimes without a king in our
king sized beds
and it gets lonely trying to pursue a life independent after generations of
dependent women
so instead we take our energy and we extend it toward a
man's way of living
as our own ideas hang in the shadows
suspended
we stifle our creative potential
using our faces as canvases
eyeliner as pencils
creating masterpieces that only last a weekend
before sleep wipes it away
but still we find a way to keep
pretending
distracting ourselves with things that are meant to attract
but only act as satisfaction
we slow each other down when we should be providing the traction
to get us to a place where all that we are matters
even the things we've tried subtracting
we are freer now but where there were chains
there are still visible scratches, and
welts
and among all of the competition and the jealousy
the submission and the insecurities
a woman's hardest struggle is the one with
herself
One and the Same (Tetrahedra, Volume XX. 2011.)
one hand twists around the bottle
i pour
the other hand grips the glass
i pretend i am holding your hand
white skin, calloused, cold
your fingers would have fit perfectly
in the spaces between mine, and this wine
will fill the empty space inside for a time
i was part of you
a little girl skipping, laughing in your memory
but you painted over me with cigarette smoke
penciled in a funny face over mine
drowned me out with each sip
that left you less aware
but i bet come morning, i was still there
and you're still here, father
and although i want to, i can't forget you
because you cut my heart with broken bottle glass
stained with alcohol
and now it stings every time a man tries to love me
in every man i love, i see the parts of you that were
ugly
and i still carry the burden of trying to save you
by trying to save them, weak men
pretending they are you, again and
again
projecting my own shame
so it's them, it's you
that i blame
sometimes i'm grateful i don't have your last name
but still, i am you and
you are me, we are
one and the same.
Sometimes I wonder when the Earth will decide it’s
my turn
to line up underneath it, next to other
bone-ridden boxes.
Or will I be ashes
freed from some loved ones hand,
writhing with the wind,
fighting to mix in with the
dirt and waters, a
final vow to be part of it all
even in death?
If I write my will, will that further prepare me?
Will the tangible things I leave behind mean more than the risks I was
willing to take?
And what would my sister choose to remember me by?
This piano I’ll leave her, or
the songs we used to sing?
A Trusting Heart (Tetrahedra, Volume XXII. 2013.)
I never understood why so many women I knew hated all men after being hurt by one. I thought a new man meant a new start. I thought their pessimism was unrealistic as they dismissed every man as the same based on past experiences or website statistics. But now I get it. Being hurt one time is sometimes enough to ruin it for everyone. I despise my once trusting heart. The never questioning things. The often times I should have used caution. Only naive minds try thinking with their hearts without wondering what it might cost them and then they miss the signs transpiring. And that's how liars get by, you see? Because sometimes a heartbeat can be so loud that it drowns out the mind entirely. And even if I felt I could trust a man again, even to the greatest extent, there would always be a question of intent. Yours was not evident until I walked in that day unexpected, not expecting to find you undressed and in my mind, one question. Why didn't you hold my heart on a pedestal as high as you held her naked body straddled over yours? Her frail body, so hungry for the love that was mine, ours, but no more. She won and I didn't even know we were at war. Still I couldn't help but think she looked more beautiful than ever before; her hands planted on your chest as she cried out for more and on her wrist, a friendship bracelet that matched the one that I wore.
Mirror (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
Her name is Rosie, but my grandpa called her Rose. Some of my family used to joke and call us twins because as I got older, I began to resemble the way she looked when she was younger. I never saw it but I didn't deny it either; she was beautiful.
My grandmother, with her yellow-toned skin and brownish red hair like autumn leaves changing, was always changing. A laugh could quickly turn into angry words, rolling off of her tongue like a flame, catching your skin and eating it right down to your heart. Projection, I'm guessing from a lifetime of rejection. Maybe I got it worse because I was like a direct reflection. Reminding her of a history she thought she left, and maybe it still hurt because she never got the lesson. Not enough tears fell for the scars to lessen. To the white kids who spit on her from school buses as she walked to school, she was too black. To her family and friends always teasing her, she was too light, and wIth the changing times she thought that I had it easier. But things weren't always bad between me and her.
I still remember those Sunday mornings I watched her put on blue eyeliner and red lipstick as we got ready for church. One day she started showing me how to do the same. "Not too much," she'd say. Every Sunday morning we were late. I still remember those late nights she'd stay up waiting for me to come home. There was always an expression of relief on her tired face when I walked through the door. She couldn't stop me from going out with friends and she also couldn't stop herself from worrying. I remember my grandmother trying to teach me how to be feminine. But in a state of rebellion, I dressed and acted more like my brothers and started hanging out with their friends. That didn't last long and I became like a girl again. Over the years I slowly began to grow into my own, mixed with pieces of each generation before me. I became myself by taking the parts of my grandmother, so deeply ingrained in me, that weren't working and left them where my tears fell, and she and I became a little more free; and the parts I loved, I decided to keep. It was the good memories I decided to keep.
"Who are you?" my grandmother asked me one day. My own grandmother. This woman I've known all my life, and lived with more than half of it. We stared at each other in equal confusion, but for different reasons. "Who am I? I'm Ashley," I told her. My mouth stopped explaining but my heart kept on. "The one you let get away with almost anything; the one you used to let go through your drawers of make-up like I was looking for treasure, letting me take whatever I wanted; the one whose good grades you were always proud of; It's me, your oldest granddaughter."
But even then, not even the tears seeping from my heart, not even my hopeful energy could mend whatever it was that fell apart in her memory. Born to her own daughter, I still somehow became more like a long lost friend she would never see again. I am a stranger to her. Still I looked in her eyes hoping she would see me and remember me, her "twin." I kept looking even after it was clear she wouldn't. Because if she didn't remember me, she might remember herself in this mirror I was trying to create. She might remember who she was, and that would have been enough for me.
The First Time (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
you're slipping away
in and out of women, of consciousness
losing count, lost beginning
unable to comprehend
and put names to faces, they all become faceless
as all that begins to matter is what's below the waist
you fill them to fill the void, try to get back what was taken
and it's easy to avoid when your heart is racing
because it feels too good, but when it's over
you're the same, and
you think this time you're closer
next time will leave you painless
but more shame is all that is waiting in line
as you get farther from your first time
trying to change your first time
because I bet you imagined it'd be with someone your own age
someone with whom it was a mutual exchange
but she was old enough to be your mother back then
she was old enough to be your mother because she was
your mother's friend
decided you were cute and that when you were of age
she'd have her way
but she didn't even wait until your
eighteenth birthday
and you didn't have any say
still, as you talk about it now, you laugh out loud in a proud way
like it was okay
but if she were a man and your were a girl, it'd be an outrage
front page
but you don't see it that way
you think it made you a man but it takes more to define it
and you can't move your life forward when at the same time you're
trying to rewind it
denying won't make you forget, not even time will
it's the hurt you have to accept and reconcile with
because the truth is never as ugly as the lies that bind it
there's just so much glitter we use to disguise it
but glitter always falls off and all that's left is what it was hiding
wanting to be brought into the light, and
now it's trying
to free you from this cycle you've been winding
and trapped in
and you would get some closure, some due satisfaction
if you could look at the wrong done and admit that it happened, because
it
did
happen
and after all the crying necessary to move past it
and after the dying of that boy, that moment, stolen that you'll never get back
one day when you remember it, you won't be saddened
because hardly anyone's first time turns out just as they'd imagined
Trying To Die (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
there's residue on the counter where he poured out a small mountain of it
such a perfectionist
he uses his ID card to form lines with the powder as I counted them
one....three.....six
I was happy to be part of something I thought was big
I felt proud of it then
not knowing the damage that would amount in him
he mumbles out loud, something about it won't hurt me and
do I want to try
as he finishes it off before i can reply
it's these times he likes to share too much of his life
telling me things about himself he otherwise wouldn't mention
as each hit slows his inhibition
I feel guilt rising up in my gut like intuition
because my reality is not so twisted
so I make up a reason to leave this self afflicting tradition we invented
and get us out of this state of mind
we walk out and turn off the light
leaving our tears on the bathroom floor to air dry
"here's your dollar" he says
I unroll it and wipe away white dust wondering if it will still spend
he starts to tell me something but it's hard to comprehend
I try making contact but his eyes shoot quick glances across walls
looking at everything but me
pinball machine
and there's stuff spilling out from bottles
spilling out from underneath my bed in excess
i count them
five.....nine.....thirteen
i never noticed
princess and the pea
what should be too much for most is never enough for him
over doing it like overdose
how many times has he come close?
as his drug of choice and his use becomes more intense, I wonder
how did he end up so far from his innocence?
from video games and late night TV
to idolizing dead celebrities
from cracking jokes in the back of the schoolhouse
to airing the crack smell in the bathroom out
I want to look up to him but I don't know how
heroes aren't usually this low down
I wonder how we could have grown up in the same house
but be so different in the way we turned out
what made me choose pen and paper
while he chose rolling papers?
what made me choose the simplicity of faucet water
while he chose the vodka bottle
genetics of an alcoholic father?
what makes me want to live while he looks at life
and decides to not even bother?
he thinks of his past and sees no point in grieving
because you'd spend half of your life changing
the half you'd been leading
and that doesn't make you happy
it just makes you even
he sees it as a waste of time and he's not just trying to get high
mother read between the lines
he's trying to die
A Woman's Struggle (Tetrahedra, Volume XXI. 2012.)
women are freer now than thirty, forty, fifty years ago, there's
more opportunity
but we are still not good enough to be considered
autonomous beings
our soft hands that sew, cook, play piano and hold children
are not calloused enough
we have to work like men to be taken seriously or else
be taken advantage of
our anger is unacceptable and if we express it
we are either psycho or on our cycle, so
we repress it, and we
repress it
until it takes the form of anxiety or depression
we sit still and look pretty as we bite down on our aggression
and don't question the hurt
and to lessen the sting
we search to find worth in
material things
we observe the commercials on TV, the magazines
for the next big thing to make us feel like we are someone or
something
fashion is ever changing
once we go blond, dark hair is the new thing
once we get used to our curves, thin is in
and all of the different women we have been has buried the
true thing
young girls are becoming the dolls they used to play with
women are cutting into the bodies they used to be okay with
afraid we are not good enough for the men we lay with
we convince ourselves that there is something better they're gonna find
yet WE condition them to love with their eyes
and there is no boundary line, just go online
how many women are competing with their minds?
we complain that we are only seen as sexual beings but
look at how sexual we are being
claiming there is no respect but we don't object enough to
casual sex
rejecting that voice inside saying, "not yet"
because it sure gets lonely sometimes without a king in our
king sized beds
and it gets lonely trying to pursue a life independent after generations of
dependent women
so instead we take our energy and we extend it toward a
man's way of living
as our own ideas hang in the shadows
suspended
we stifle our creative potential
using our faces as canvases
eyeliner as pencils
creating masterpieces that only last a weekend
before sleep wipes it away
but still we find a way to keep
pretending
distracting ourselves with things that are meant to attract
but only act as satisfaction
we slow each other down when we should be providing the traction
to get us to a place where all that we are matters
even the things we've tried subtracting
we are freer now but where there were chains
there are still visible scratches, and
welts
and among all of the competition and the jealousy
the submission and the insecurities
a woman's hardest struggle is the one with
herself
One and the Same (Tetrahedra, Volume XX. 2011.)
one hand twists around the bottle
i pour
the other hand grips the glass
i pretend i am holding your hand
white skin, calloused, cold
your fingers would have fit perfectly
in the spaces between mine, and this wine
will fill the empty space inside for a time
i was part of you
a little girl skipping, laughing in your memory
but you painted over me with cigarette smoke
penciled in a funny face over mine
drowned me out with each sip
that left you less aware
but i bet come morning, i was still there
and you're still here, father
and although i want to, i can't forget you
because you cut my heart with broken bottle glass
stained with alcohol
and now it stings every time a man tries to love me
in every man i love, i see the parts of you that were
ugly
and i still carry the burden of trying to save you
by trying to save them, weak men
pretending they are you, again and
again
projecting my own shame
so it's them, it's you
that i blame
sometimes i'm grateful i don't have your last name
but still, i am you and
you are me, we are
one and the same.
