After My Diagnosis: A Journey
My heart and my brain
Now grow in unison,
Thinking as one, and wondering
Where to go from there
After leaving the psychiatrist’s office.
My soul and my mouth
Both ask the same questions,
Asking why I didn’t know sooner.
And can I finally stop fighting
After finding answers I didn’t consider?
My lungs and my eyes
Must handle the new life in front of me.
They force me breathing, searching
For the next step to take,
Knowing I’ve got a powerful life to live.
My feet and my hands
Keep building and working
Because I’ve only just begun,
Climbing visceral mountains
With each day that I’m given.
HELPFUL LINKS
Florida Eventide
Golden amber
Lovingly suffocating
Under a dense cape of turquoise.
Shadows of pines, arms open,
To clasp the departing.
A single glimmer
Amid the sleeping ocean
Venus looks down and grins.
HELPFUL LINKS
What I Felt After Being Diagnosed at 20
Potential
Energy,
Infinite
And soft,
Rolling
Clear waves
Of starry
Blossoms.
Steadily
Growing
Like iron
On trees,
Morphing
Into
Wavering gold
By a few simple words.
After My Diagnosis: A Journey
My heart and my brain
Now grow in unison,
Thinking as one, and wondering
Where to go from there
After leaving the psychiatrist’s office.
My soul and my mouth
Both ask the same questions,
Asking why I didn’t know sooner.
And can I finally stop fighting
After finding answers I didn’t consider?
My lungs and my eyes
Must handle the new life in front of me.
They force me breathing, searching
For the next step to take,
Knowing I’ve got a powerful life to live.
My feet and my hands
Keep building and working
Because I’ve only just begun,
Climbing visceral mountains
With each day that I’m given.
HELPFUL LINKS
AFTER HOURS
WOW! Women on Writing Writing Contest Honorable Mention
When the city’s clock tower struck ten at night, the lights of the New Progressive Republic Library automatically shut off, and the Pipher Screens lit up like mechanical fireflies. The whir of the machines prepared for sleep. Harsh spots of white light still peppered the tiled ceiling, lighting the wide room. The Librarian edged out from behind her varnished front desk, folding her worn cardigan tighter against her ribs, and hurried toward the Catalogue along the far wall.
She examined the miniscule files recorded, detailing every Screen used, every “book” checked out, every Daily Automatic Newspaper read that day. But as The Librarian checked the Catalogue, she heard a distinct crackle. It came from the bottom floor, where the paper books sat in scattered, unorganized shelves gathering dust.
The Librarian heard another, unmistakable crack, like a whip flicking the air in the distance. She limped to the stairs placed in the middle of the Library, which led down a wide cavern-like area to the bottom floor. A pale-yellow light guided her down, to the left, until The Librarian’s heels stepped onto patchy green carpet. She listened for the sound again, wondering who had managed to sneak downstairs without her noticing, who thought they could evade her and stay after hours. A few quiet minutes later, The Librarian caught the sound several aisles down.
Marching past aisle after aisle, her lips pursed, her cardigan ruffled, The Librarian reached the source of the sound.
A young girl about ten sat cross-legged on the floor, a thick book with a cracked spine placed in her lap. Other volumes, white with dust save where her tiny fingertips had handled them, lay about her. Her plaited hair hung about her face, already speckled with bits of dust, but she ignored how it gathered about her like snow, keeping her wide brown eyes on the crooked black lines stamped onto the pages. She flipped through another page.
“Excuse me,” The Librarian set her pointed jaw, “The lights went off on the top floor; the Library is closed.”
The girl pricked her small head up and eyed The Librarian pensively. “I know,” she answered. She dropped her eyes back to her book.
The Librarian bristled. “Where are your parents?” she demanded.
The girl shrugged, “I don’t know. They let me go around by myself. I usually hang out by the Pipher General Store, but I always want to come down here to read. I would have left, and you wouldn’t have seen me, but I got to a really good part and I can’t leave yet.” She redirected her attention back to the book, despite The Librarian’s glare.
The Librarian placed her leathery hands on her hips and examined the girl, unsure what to do. There was a penalty for keeping the Library open late.
“What’s your name?” asked the girl suddenly. She glanced up from her book, but only for a moment, before her eyes darted back to the page.
The Librarian pulled her arms back up, hugging herself, and drummed her bony fingers against her elbow, “Smith.”
“Oh. Everyone is named Smith.”
“What’s your name?”
“Judy.”
Judy looked up from her book, noticing The Librarian’s stare. She impulsively drew the book closer to her, wrapping her arms around its crumbling cover. Her eyes widened in slight worry, and suddenly she seemed, to The Librarian, like a mother holding her child, a crown of dust upon her head.
“What are you reading?” asked The Librarian.
“King Arthur,” answered Judy.
“I think I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s my favorite. It’s about heroes and knights and magical faraway places. You read all about King Arthur’s life and the heroic things he and his knights do. I’m not stuck in this crummy city when I read it.”
The Librarian kept silent, staring at Judy, who rested her palms against the book in sacred acknowledgment and lowered her eyes.
“I’m at the end. King Arthur is dead. But that’s what makes it a story, ya know?”
The Librarian caught a streak of light outside the window. Looking out, she spotted the sleek levitating cars, the 10:15 monorail whizzing up and over one of the Pipher buildings. Orange lights dotted the windows of skyscrapers, replacing the stars. Upstairs, the machines continued whirring before slipping into silence, leaving the Library quiet before the noise picked up again tomorrow.
The Librarian turned back to Judy sitting in the dust.
“Take all the time you need, Judy,” she said.
O75
Mabel eyed her grandmother’s neon orange sheet. She needed what the Palm Shore Country Club ladies referred to as “the grandfather.” Mabel noted the aquamarine splotches, illuminating her numbers: B3, I22, N36, G57.
Mabel shook her head, silently vowing to herself to never visit her grandmother on Sundays again. It was her mother who egged her on for tonight, who insisted she socialize with Grandma and her “friends.”
A ball rattled up the tube, into the caller’s hands.
“O75.”
“BINGO!”
Mabel watched the corner of the billboard ignite. Next week, she’d schedule for Tuesday.
FAIRYLAND
Three in the morning, thunder merely at a purr. Frightened, the boy hurried down the hall of his grandfather’s Queen Anne house. Windowpanes were swatches of velvety black, staring at him with their own unseen eyes. The boy rounded the corner into his grandfather’s study to see the girl’s ghost in her cashmere melody. She held a copy of Viri Romae, the frayed green edges lined in gauzy white where her fingertips gripped. She had a thick luster in her eyes, a deep lilt in her voice when she spoke.
Will you let your grandfather know I must borrow this book?
The boy noticed the buoyancy of her hair, how it floated in the wind that wasn’t. She kept a mist along her naked feet. Shoulders saturated in a glimmering constellation.
Where did you come from?
The girl’s ghost held out an arm, set the book in the sea foam folds of her robes. The boy watched it disappear into serene nothing. She turned to the withering globe the boy’s grandfather kept underneath the window.
I lived about here. I need to borrow a book for the trip home.
She dropped a cotton finger along the latitude lines that never were, where explorers always speculated fairyland would be. A light brush of the finger against the aging wood, and the boy opened his eyes.
Like the ticking of time, the dreams left one by one. Years and years rolled by in waves, washing away the glittering fantasies. The boy became a man and inherited his grandfather’s house. One night he heard the thunder echoing along the hills, and when he came to his grandfather’s study, he found the girl’s ghost in the window, her form resting on the same old globe.
How did you find the book?
The girl turned from the starry night, crystal tears in her eyes.
I’m afraid I lost it, dear.