All posts by X Teri

Guest Post, Poetry And Prose, Relationships, Writing

Did You Ever (Guest Poem)

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I told you I was going to bed hours ago.

I’m still wide awake and it’s almost tomorrow.

The absence of your words screams at me.

The deafening cry of your lacking intensity.

I remember you professed a strong preference

For concrete actions over eloquence.

But emoting my messages doesn’t count

And otherwise sparse deeds still leave doubt.

I think you like my smile when it’s directed at you;

You approve of my resume for blood so blue;

And you think you’ve got me around your finger.

I think I haven’t got any more reasons to linger.

There must be better, something better than this,

An arrangement where my needs matter like his.

Somebody who could hear my words and care

About the heart that so bravely put them there.

I don’t fall in love with titles, fast cars or banks

I don’t care about your grandaddy’s professional rank.

My heart holds the things you can’t touch or see,

And I expect to get that in return, equitably.

I asked for clear expectations and kind words.

I asked to claim time and what we already were.

I never yelled but told him I was watching to see

If he’d give love that felt meaningful to me.

At this point, it’s clear, he can’t or he won’t;

The result is the same. I hurt, you know?

And the answer doesn’t matter but I’ll ask him anyway:

Did you ever really want me that way?

Guest Post, Poetry And Prose, Relationships, Writing

Driving Past Your Home (Guest Poem)

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I hate how I feel driving past your home

But I hate how I hate it even more.

So close but still a million miles away

Like rolling dice in a game I can’t really play.

I’ll keep everything you ever left with me

Wasn’t much – since it was just six weeks-

But you can take all the couldas and shoulda

Because I exhausted my words and my wouldas.

There’s no empty space, but there coulda been.

Everything’s out of place, right where it’s always been.

I filled up on ‘almost’ while you topped up my glass

Till my cup was empty-then I was on my ass.

Could you please move away from here?

Or turn back the clock, close the gap, bring me near?

You were half leaving while still trying to stay.

So close – but a million miles away.

Lemon Moment, Monroe County, Nostalgia, Personal

4 a.m. Meteorites And Memories

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The plants are attracting the wrong crowd.

After working a bit very early this morning, I drove to the flattest open space that was convenient. Sleeping less sometimes has its rewards. I parked near the railroad tracks and access road by Meeks and sat on the hood of my car. It didn’t take long for the meteor showers that peak this weekend night to dazzle me. Though there was more light interference than I liked, the wide view of the night sky provided more than enough vantage for me to watch several brilliant transitory flashes burn across the sky. I’m sure anyone driving by might have looked twice at that hour because I decided to lay flat on the road several feet away from my car, and my eyes turned to the sky. As I lay there, the mass of traffic snarls from yesterday evening seemed like a week ago. The hardness of the ground didn’t bother me. After a few more flashes, I went back to my apartment. The first time I went back out on the landing, I wasn’t thinking about more meteors. But the sky gifted me with a couple as I stood there.

These meteorites are debris related to Haley’s Comet. It staggers me that about 50 tons of this debris hit the Earth’s atmosphere daily.

Though my Grandpa knew nothing about the night sky, some of the sporadic memories I have of him are of him pointing at the Big Dipper, or asking me if I could see the man in the moon. He spent most of his life surrounded by fields and immense night sky views. I spent more than a few seconds thinking about what the meteorites might look like in the fields of Monroe County.

For a brief few moments, the night made me wonder how objects that could be 4.5 billion years old were racing toward their demise only for me, a solitary human being, to witness. And that each of us, in our own way, flies through time exactly like they are.

X

Lemon Moment, Personal

Expect

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If you could swoop up above yourself, rise above the surface of the earth and look doown, would everything carry the same weight of importance and drama? I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I have moments where I walk out of the mess of activity in commerce. In less than two minutes, I can descend and immerse myself into a place that makes much of it seem foolish. You don’t need a special place to recognize the sheer wastefulness of much of what preoccupies our minds. But the familiarity and routine of what we expect to see and experience comes with the uninvited guest of blindness. What we fail to experience and see is often the consequence of not expecting anything beyond the ordinary. 

X

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Lemon Moment, Nostalgia, Personal

Leather Memories

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My cousin gave me a leather jacket that belonged to her brother Barry.  Normally, I don’t wear such nice things because, well, I’m me and I often don’t know whether I’ll end up in a branchy tree or a creek. 

As I was paying at the inconvenience store, a woman behind me told me that she loved the leather jacket and missed seeing them. Her husband loved leather jackets. He passed away a few years ago. I asked her what kind of cigarettes he smoked and she brightened up with a smile. She asked me how I knew he smoked. So I told her that it was almost a federal law that such nice leather jackets required the wearer to emulate James Dean or the icons of the past, all of whom smoked. 

As she laughed, I asked her to tell me a funny story about her husband. Her smile grew even wider and I knew my personal question had opened a memory doorway in her head.

She didn’t hesitate:

“He often said that he couldn’t go out without a leather jacket. Whether it was church, a family dinner, or a quick trip to the store, he would often forget his keys or wallet, but never his leather jacket. When one of our nephews got married, the bride-to-be asked him to remove it for a photo after the reception. The nephew laughed and told his new wife that this wasn’t how we do things in the family. The leather jacket was an official member of the family. Luckily, she agreed and said as long as my husband bought her a leather jacket, it was okay with her. She forgot all about it. But a year later, he bought her and his nephew both leather jackets. It became a running joke.”

She told the story with more detail and definitely with more humor. 

When she saw me in the leather jacket, she was not simply looking at a jacket. To her, it was a nostalgic reminder of her one love in life. She was still smiling when I left. I attempted to act cool as I popped up the collar. It made me smile too. 

X

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Ancestry, Family, Genealogy, Personal

For Brittany

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Because I was asked to frame my life as an outsider, here’s something I wrote:

“Half of my family beat the gong of appearances, even though the shadows and secrets would inevitably be revealed by anyone dedicated to discovering them. My other half, possessed by similar other demons, revealed their flaws visibly. I came to understand that behavior not concealed by appearances has its own bitter yet revelatory honesty. And that I would choose openly displaying my demons over the betrayal of the insistence of family honor. There is no honor in secrecy or turning one’s head away from the past. A family cannot put to rest its emotional inheritance by denying that it happened.” X

Lemon Moment, Personal

Creek Thoughts

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I’m not the supernatural sort most of the time. Getting to my new place in the creek, I deviated and went through the place I used to live in Johnson. Somehow, it slipped my mind for a while that two of the biggest events in my life took place less than 40 ft apart. Totally unconnected except by location. Both involving death. It’s strange how my mind blurs the mountain of coincidences that resulted from both. When I drove by on my way to the creek, none of that was on my mind. Then the cascade of simultaneous memories and coincidences cloaked me. I’ve mentioned before that I experience odd cycles of coincidences. At times it feels like it was another person living through them. Someone shared a video earlier of a woman who had a particularly bizarre string of coincidences. I know that we all unintentionally string together connections where there aren’t any. But for any of you who have run into a matrix of events, people, and places, maybe you know what I’m talking about. If you do, please share with me what I’m trying to say. (That last part made me laugh.) When I first arrived here, a dad and his young son were fishing upstream. To give them quiet, I went way too far down the road and then cut through the foliage. Even Chuck Norris would have winced at the terrain and the infinite number of sharp, unexpected stones. Even for my tough feet, I let out more than one curse. Sitting on a high bank in the middle of the river with my feet immersed in the cold water and inundated with the loud bubble and sounds of the creek makes me feel like I’m suspended in time. Because I probably am subconsciously. It’s still early enough in fall for there to be butterflies and dragonflies darting about. Every couple of minutes, a random bird will fly over me and below the overhang canopy of trees; if I sit motionless, some of them are within two feet of my head as they pass. I guess my wildly colored dashiki shirt looks natural in the clear water.
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