Then there will be times when I go missing. As a cat, I am. Alone. Dying quietly. My preference. Having nine lives, but only one face, everything shows. Too hard to hide. Best to be alone. Licking my wounds in peace. Healing. Thinking. Regrouping. Patiently awaiting the rebirth. The next act. S. Conde Read…
He is already asleep. I turn off the television, and slide in. Between the sheets. Unconscious, yet aware. He pulls me over to him. His big hand around my waist. He holds me. I rearrange the pillows to suit. Snuggling in to his warm embrace. My feet are cold. I slip them between his legs. …
She had a cadence to her voice. A pattern to her speech. Sublimely Southern in her delivery. Rarely did she volunteer her opinion. When asked, she chose her words with care. She spoke in a kind of code. Responding indirectly, answering questions not yet asked. She could cut you down, lift you up, make all…
I closed my eyes. At long last, I dreamt a dream. Spring had come. The seeds, bulbs, and roses planted in years past burst forth. Alive with color and delight. Vines hung. Draped over the walls of my garden. Dotted in blue, orange and gold. Hyacinths of white and Irises in purple and yellow shot…
It’s not that I can’t sleep, it’s that I don’t, I won’t. Petulant, I refuse. I will not rest in my pointless desire to control the outcome of a million variables. My mind is a fairground. The impossible isn’t quite. The colors are bright and varied. The inaccessible is within reach. I skip, awake, laughing,…
I dreamt of seeking. Finding myself in New Orleans again. Searching through a magnificent home on the Esplanade. One I’d known from before. Delight upon delight I witnessed. Joy and happiness, down every passageway, and corridor. Keep looking, a voice told me. “The search doesn’t end until you find your demon.” I felt this to…
Uprooted. The weather takes its toll. Affected by the wind and rain, the early darkness of the winter months, snow. Is it the weather alone, or has nature herself, conspired with my soul to produce the perfect backdrop to my mood? Whatever the cause, the effect is apparent. No longer grounded in the earth, floating…
I traveled a great distance to be here and now. Across vast craggy mountains I climbed, stumbled and fell. Clinging to rock with bare fingers and broken nails, I thought I would die. I did not. Crawling, I continued, on hands and knees through bushes and briars, whose branches tangled and pulled at my hair,…
There he stands. Dressed in red and white. He is black and strong. A warrior. He walks, unmarked, through the flame, he beats the drum. Virile. Lover and protector is he. Disguised as a woman, fair skinned, holy, sainted. He lives on. She is with him. Hips swaying. She moves. Dancing. Dancing to his drums….
There are no words to describe it really. I can only speak of the feeling. It starts deep within me at the base of my spine and spreads upward with a warmth and tingling, throbbing even. Up to my belly it goes. Hot, aching, reaching my heart. Down my arms into my hands; alive with…