WordPress weekly photo challenge: Story
I Will NOT Be a Blank Page
7
Monthly Archives: March 2018
Meet Me Half Way
Meet me half way.
Without compromise our heels will blister
our feet will tear, crack and falter
We will stumble and crumble
and the road will rise and swallow us whole.
The demons will tug on our insides
until nothing is left but slivers of ice
cold and unforgiving.
Meet me halfway
and the rocks and cactus needles will subside
the path will straighten
the surface will be shed of it’s splinters
the shards of glass will dissolve into sand.
Meet me halfway
and together we will weather
each strenuous road
as we take turns carrying cargo too heavy for one.
image credit
via Uncompromising
This Ain’t Us
This Ain’t Us
I didn’t grow up with “Good morning, Cono” smiles or quiet and calm conversations around the supper table. Maybe, we just learned not to speak our mind. Especially since one or two of the minds around the kitchen table might not like our notions.
If somebody were to peek in the window at suppertime, they’d have seen four mouths that moved due to chewing, not from that risky pastime called “talking”. In fact, if we tried to catch each word that came out of our mouths, especially at suppertime, there wouldn’t be enough to fill a soup bowl. And if we were counting on words for our nourishment, well then, we would have starved plumb to death.
I grew up believing that conversation cost money and since those were hard times, Mother and Dad tried to save every penny they could. So if Dad were to tell me, “Son, please leave the pie in front’a Ike’s plate,” it would have cost fifty cents and we could have put that half dollar towards new shoes for Delma.
“Son, the woodpile’s low so I need you to chop the wood today please,” would have cost seventy-five cents and we’d have been chewing on lambsquarters for the rest of our poor lives.
Now on the other hand, when he looked directly at me, pointed to that woodpile and said, “Get busy!” he’d just stockpiled a bundle of money. And if it weren’t for him buying his liquor, we would have had enough money for several good meals and maybe even a new dress for Mother.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham
image credit
via Fact
Step Away from the Ledge
What are you doing way up there?
Are you trying to branch out? Expand your horizons? Or deaden them?
How many ladders do you need? Are two not enough?
Really, you don’t need ladders.
Get down off that ledge. It won’t solve anything and, besides, it makes me nervous.
Perhaps you could climb the shadows instead. Climb them until their dark is gone. Climb them until all you see are those useless ladders. The ones you don’t need in order to arrive safely at the place you want to be.
Don’t be afraid. The ground will support you.
And it’s amazing how high you can jump if you try.
photo by C. Dennis-Willingham
via Branch
He Ain’t Normal
Although I’d thought about it many a time, I made it through half of the summer without killing No-Account. So has Aunt Nolie for that matter. Her and that dead-beat husband of hers seem be back to some kind of normal — which for them means the typical bed grunting.
I see No-Account out the window. He’s brought Dad home from another hot springs pool that was supposed to help with his arthritis.
No-Account walks through the door. He’s supporting a man under his arm that looks nothing like my dad. Looks like he weighs no more than a baby bird. Ninety pounds is what they say he is now. Skinny as a rail, not worth a grain of salt. Definitely not strong enough to lift a hand on me — barely strong enough to lift a word.
Excerpt from the novel, No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham.
painting by Edvard Munch – image credit
via Typical
It’s Out There …
A Quilted Journey
In every fabric of my soul
where fibers weave and thread
where stitching seems quite flawless
there are stains from when I bled
Ah, but isn’t it quite marvelous
to know this quilt has tracked
all my strains and struggles
yet I still remain intact.
Yes, I still remain intact.
— by C. Dennis-Willingham
photo image – quilt of Maya Angelou made by Faith Ringgold
via Fabric
Thank You, Yes, I’m Fine
Is my hair in little tangles
Do I laugh when I recline
Do I make my paintings messy?
Then, thank you, yes, I’m fine.
Do I lose my rhythm dancing
on a silvery cloud nine
and laugh since it don’t matter
if you laugh at my benign?
When I forget to wear the “good”shoes
where in fancy restaurant, dine
Can’t I let my toes be happy
while indulging my waistline?
Will you think of me uncouth if,
preferring the bus line,
I talk to random strangers
than the snobby, asinine?
Somewhere in the midst of fake
I have to draw the line
and teeter not upon it
but erect in my design.
And, thank you, yes, I’m fine.
Image credit, painting by Angela Morgan
via Messy
A Restart to Nothing New
Delma mashes her little nose up against the window of the car. I stay quiet, thinking about what lays ahead, something I don’t yet know about. I try to picture it, a town with gypsum snow under the ground, a town where Dad is happy, a town where….
“Where we goin’, Cono?” Delma whispers.
“I ain’t so sure Sis, but it’ll be someplace good ‘cause looky here, we’re ridin’ in a four-door automobile!”
She turns away from me then and keeps pressing her little nose up against the window until she finally gives in to sleeping on Mother’s lap. At least we are together, Delma and me. It’s just another place that I plan to watch over her. I want to keep her close by, so nobody can snatch her away again. As long as I can do that, it doesn’t make no difference where we are.
The car keeps humming slowly down the highway. I try to sleep but I can’t. Instead, I think about Mr. Ed Rotan and decide right then and there that “Cono, Texas” has a real good ring to it. Cono, Texas won’t just have snow gypsum under the ground and a railroad on top of it. It’ll have oil underground and derricks on the top, pumping night and day. I call them jacks “grasshoppers” because that’s just what they look like when they’re pumping up and down. They’re grasshoppers trying to hop away, but they’re stuck and have to settle for hopping up and down in the same place.
My town will have at least two good cafés that serve T-bone steaks and tea iced in clean tin jars, free to me since it’s my town.
My mind leaves Cono, Texas and I think again on Ranger, the town where I learned how to brush my teeth, where Ma and Pa have a farm and a house that you’ll always want to go back to, where Polo takes me anywhere I want to go. Ranger is about haircuts that teach you about boxing and about boxing that teaches you to keep standing up. It’s a town where a Tiger can stir the ground and make you a little sister.
Oh yeah. The town of Ranger teaches you that goats freeze, but hands burn.
I go back to the comfort of Cono, Texas, off the poor list and high on the hog. I don’t quite know what to expect, but I sure do like this red brick highway leading to someplace new. I’m thinking that everything’s going to be “copacetic,” like bright colorful times might be ahead, like we’re following a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
But I don’t know nothin’ from nothin’.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham
photo credit
via Restart
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 