I am alone in the room. I smile. A large window opens a view of my neighborhood on a 50-degree January day. Choosepeace, I tell myself while the news repeats horrors in a universally expected monotone.
A sunbeam appears. Winter-bare trees stretch rich, dark branches against stark cobalt blue. The light reaches into our ordinary living space. The sun’s intensity splashes inside.
Breathe me in, sunbeam seems to say. I won’t stay long. The briefness of my appearance does not negate my presence. Even as the darkness appears, remember my brilliance lives within you, too.
“Self-acceptance is self-love in action.”
― Jodi LivonINSIDE THE NARRATIVE
A few fellow writers gather at a coffeehouse
to share poetry. I read a narrative piece
about a nameless boy who pretends a painful event
has never happened. He hides
inside a malignant silence, innocence shattered.
His wounds leak into cells under his skin
long after the bleeding has stopped.
I pretend to hide behind the gender switch,
inside fictional scenes, and create places I have touched
but never embraced. My voice remains strong
through ten stanzas
until a single unexpected stammer
rips through my veneer,
thin as ice on a lake in early spring.
I’m afraid I could drown in my own metaphors.
I come to a moment when my character
compares himself to a goldfinchwho leaves winter and enters spring
with bright warm-weather feathers.
He flies onto a budding branch.
My character knows who he is again.
I recall expecting death one night when
I didn’t know shades of color would reappear
and develop subtlety, strength, and shape.
Songs would rise from my dried throat.
The boy in my poem grows through each stanza,
speaking, becoming whole. Another woman in the group
suggests with a single tremulous glance
that she, too, could tell a similar story. She nods and smiles. I prefer it to applause.
May I speak to the Martin you were when your grandmother died?
Thanks.
I’m asking because I’m a grandmother now. My grandchildren look to me to discover who they are. They learn from the attention I give to them. By my presence. Death took your grandmother and hope left you.
You regained more than hope. You let an entire group of people know who they are.
It’s a privilege to be a grandparent. And yet the child inside me pretends to be gone. I developed into a loving, accomplished woman who helped pay a stranger’s bill in a grocery store. Yet, I struggle sometimes to feel important enough to get past moments when I was a lost child too. The sun is not gone. The world celebrates today because you planted love, Dr. King. I can’t deny recurrent feelings but can allow them to pass and recognize the whole.
Love, may we learn to allow it to spread inside and outside of our families and neighborhoods.
The illustration is taken from a public domain drawing. There are many, just as Dr. King’s gifts are many.
I believe in the goodness of imagination. ~Sue Monk Kidd
Memories, off-screen
A friend calls and her enthusiasm shines.
She describes the beautiful chaos
of her two young children
as they illustrate the book Mommy wrote
about their make-believe adventures,
where the creatures have rhyming names
and skin colors that match the rainbow,
while the television screen remains blank
and the world expands at their fingertips.
illustration made from kid-style decorated photo
terrypetersen 