An Antidote of Another Sort

An short excerpt from a short story, from a short book, entitled, "This is Not My Life- That's a Much Longer Story."

Is it ever anything but autobiographical, she thought to herself as she set down her Pinot and began to write. What a tease, she believed, to think it possible to divorce ourself from our Self as central theme.

Though as of late, she had been encouraging her husband to read more, she hadn't half expected the text. A paraphrase, although too eloquent to be his own, yes, it must have been lifted in it's entirety, a quote making the case for female Viagra. No accident that only an hour before, she had glanced at an acquaintance's Facebook status expressing her frustration over her students' inability to fully grasp the notion of plagiarism.

The quote, in summation, needed no further argument to be anything but convincing- for the premises that he had apparently omitted, she simply filled in from her own life. Have women in this liberal and post feminist age become too radicalized in their roles and related expectations that they have dropped the desire to faux-procreate once they have already offered their womb twice over to the preservation of the race? It seems in all the emasculating that's apparently occurring in the modern American family, women are tolerating man's whims less and less. And, the NY Times finds this newsworthy? And, he finds this mid-afternoon text-worthy (simply hyphenating all words that are apparently not words, but she believes they should soon become).

Perhaps female Viagra is the answer, or perhaps, she thought, another antidote of an altogether different sort. Emasculation seems to be impossible to occur if women aren't simultaneously being de-feminized. She thought back to the college years and the women's lib-beat on the street feel of her courses and thought there was one missing; the course needed to bring full circle the link between expectations (the kind that are met) and attraction.

The Impressionist

If the subject is somehow impressed upon, does it grammatically follow that the object is the impression or the impressionist? Or maybe neither of these, but actually the Impresser. Whatever the proper conjugation, or maybe the meaning intended, I am not sure if the consequence belongs better linked to the affect of the subject of the effect of the verb. Perhaps, then, one might be simultaneously effected as a result of the affect, all the while affected: so having been quite impressed upon, locked in reciprocal consequence.

But, it is not so much a discussion of the properties of words but content of thought that is so weighted; a simple meditation of how one allows the self to be impressed upon at all, really. An unrequited, incomplete something. A chimera of some intangible object of thinking.

Hand-Maiden with Love

I fingered the stitches as I knew she had lovingly stitched them, remembering back to more impressionable years, to a time coupled with first love naiveté and compulsive-creative flurry.

I pretended the threat to the tee- sheet unfolded across the vertical length of the couch and there, in my hands, clutching the lover's gift. The irony that I might be body wrapped-warm in a matrimony of each loving stitch- a crocheted quilt for a love-past when love itself spilt tirelessly over. I, now clutching not the gifts-intended, for the recipient slept hard in the bedroom with the baby at the far end of the opposite hall, but hard onto their heathered-blue and white shared trinket.

Under the queen-like size blanket, one much larger than I had ever stitched for self or lover alike, I felt enveloped in their darkness between. Had she loved him more than I? I didn't care. I loved that he had been loved hard. Loved through every stitch. And, after they had married and done divorced themselves rightly from their shared history, I appreciate their love; their display of common experience reminds me of a time littered with another happiness far before this.

Although we have all since been moved from the show of it, the sweet display of stitch after stitch, I am kept warm under the blanket of lust and circumstance, promise and regret. Is there a love better defined than by this?

Though I made not a single stitch, I too have loved hard, been, too, compelled to create many homemade gifts. I have lusted for and treaded badly through circumstance, been tempted to make and receive promises absent of foundation and regretted much of the very lack in intention. I hope that the many other women who now warm the beds of lovers I have also loved, they might be one day kept warmed by a word I have written, hummed to a tune to a song I penned- I hope they might appreciate their lover's ability to have and to yet still, inspire love.

(An attempt to articulate the irony of sleeping on the couch -and all the loaded meaning therein, under the blanket handmade by your partner's former lover.)

Keeping it Topical

I think I am on a mental-hiatus from my deeper self. Instead of meandering roads and tangents to places I can't restore, I have found some place to recover myself- in the pages and thoughts of others. Reading and thinking again, for sure, but writing- not yet. I can't bear to see the encoded mess of me undone in print, so I am hovering along the surface of what is- taking in the metaphors and thought-whims of others and basking in stories far from reach of my own. And, when I have fully recovered the desire to challenge myself, wit, vocabulary, I will. Articulate. For sure- just not today.

I agree that we are all "bad actors with bad habits."

Goodnight.

An Introduction to Someone You Should Know

Since I am lacking in creative flare of my own, I would like to introduce you to another woman- who is certainly never lacking. Full of depth and imagery, even a few lines inserts you directly into her prose- as if every letter was a moment and every space between the word, a feeling. Her work is phenomenal and I am surprised she hasn't already been whisked away to a Writer's Colony atop a mountain somewhere in the Alps.

I love her work and I am inspired to one day tackle the short story in addition to my poetry.

So without further ado, Ms. Tina Cabrera.