Illegitimate | Part III

If Geppetto carved a daughter,
would I have seen it sooner?
myself, all wood and paint and strings
wobbly kneed, naïve
chasing vodka and bad boys, just to feel alive

Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash

Or was it to forget the
fear of suspended animation
like sandpaper chewing my bones
dangling dread of the non-living, undead
If I’m not real, what am I?

There’s surety in strings
the raw physics of a marionette
its law of consequences
predictable, unforgiving
perfect for mimicking life

But I never was very good at lying
and what are puppets
if not lies in motion?
I stumble over my own nose
puppet orphan rebel ass

I’m caught in glitchy VR
rebel puppet assorphan
blipping through avatars
rebelorphanassorphanpuppet
pixelating personas until the

Whale-jawed black screen
swallows me
all of me
all the me’s
all

—————————-
——–v^—–√—–√√v^
—√√v^—√√v^—√√v^

Then spits me back
like Monstro or Jumanji
but we’re done playing games
and with limbs unstrung
I touch my chest, feel the breath

Air exchanged with trees
a thousand thousand
generations breathing me
now I see, strings are
no substitute for roots

If Geppetto carved a daughter
would I have seen it sooner?

© Nichole Liza Q

It Isn’t in My Blood

“Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in
Sometimes I feel like giving up
But I just can’t
It isn’t in my blood”
 
In My Blood, by Sean Mendes is like my anthem these days. My ANTHEM.

For a long time, I’ve been wondering…Why can’t I just give up? And when I say “give up” I don’t necessarily mean stop living. I mean, Why can’t I stop caring? Why can’t I stop fighting? Why does anything flipping matter to me at all anymore?

Believe me, I have TRIED giving up. Once upon a very dark time, I stood on the edge of the bridge overlooking an ice-cold, black river, just to ask myself the question…Could I? Would I? Am I brave enough? Desperate enough? Tired enough? If that freaks you out, don’t worry. I knew the answer before I stood there. But for some reason, I still had to ask.

Continue reading “It Isn’t in My Blood”

The Truth About Parenting Children into Adulthood (reluctantly posted by a blogger who doesn’t blog about parenting)

I almost never blog about parenting.

Why not?

Mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing. Parenting is an experiment. Every time. One in which the test subjects, conditions, and variables are always changing. The moment I think I’ve done something right is usually the moment just before the moment I find out whatever I thought I did right was actually so wrong it will require years of therapy to undo the damage. Why would I document that online?

Funny thing: while people often congratulate me for raising two great young women, they rarely ask me for parenting advice. That ought to tell you something. Sure, their mouths say “Wow, you must have done something right,” but what’s really going through their minds is “How did this woman get so lucky?” And I’m thinking, I know, right?! 

Second, I don’t blog about parenting because I like my kids, and more importantly, I want them to like me (or at least still visit me on holidays). Sharing their trials and tribulations with the world on a public blog doesn’t seem like the best way to engender familial affection.

Continue reading “The Truth About Parenting Children into Adulthood (reluctantly posted by a blogger who doesn’t blog about parenting)”

Thoughts from Inside the Storm

Photo by Alyssa L. Miller | CC by 2.0
Photo by Alyssa L. Miller | CC by 2.0

The pain burns, stings, like a thousand cuts carved into my skin, on my hands, my feet, across my chest, my stomach, my back. I can almost feel the blood oozing out like tears – my whole body weeps. My whole body weeps, shudders, shakes. I need to vomit. To expel this wretched wrong. This thing I can’t undo. This end. Which is an ending I never would have written but was written for me instead – for us all – but most of all, for him.

I am raw and broken. And sick. So sick. Only I can’t throw it up. There’s always more – more pain, more sorrow, more regret churning and burning its way through my soul.

Oh God. How can you ask me? How can you ask me to do this?

You color me in and then erase me. Drain me. To the dregs. And dregs are all I have left.

But You can’t blame me. I can blame me. I can be angry and live with regrets and could haves and should haves and would haves. But not You. Because You let this happen. You did. There’s no denying it.

So when I am nothing, when I am just sludge and scar tissue, You won’t ask why. You won’t dare look at me with surprise. You can’t possibly be surprised. You know the end from the beginning. You knew this. You knew this day. You knew this pain, too.

What if I can’t forgive You? What then? What if You and me are never the same? What have You done? Could You destroy “us”? Would You?

I think somewhere deep inside I know the answers, but today the pain is louder. Like the roaring winds of a hurricane. I hear nothing else. I feel nothing else. I am deaf to all but the screaming of my soul as I am peeled apart, layer by layer, flesh torn open and packed with salt.

Here, truth and comfort are merely words, tiny letters which, rearranged, can mean anything…or nothing at all. Meaningless. Meaningless. I spin around the eye of the storm. There is nothing but the pain.

And all I can do is wait.

© Nichole Liza Q.

——————————

For all our brothers, near, far and farthest. And to the One Brother who I need now more than ever: be my shelter from the storm.

I Will Stay

Photo by Sanyamshri | CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo by Sanyamshri | CC BY-SA 3.0

A poem about heroes, most often found in ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

He stood upon the front porch
Watching his daddy walk away
His mama stood beside the boy
His mama, she would stay

The boy, he heard her swallow hard
Watched one tear slide down her face
The boy took her by the hand
And said, “Mama, I’ll stay”

She stood upon the front porch
Watching the boy smile and wave
In the dust from the tires of the yellow bus
His mama, she would stay

He watched, as his mama grew smaller
He watched, as she faded away
As the bus jostled onward beyond
Where his heart would always stay

Continue reading “I Will Stay”

From Here to There

Photo by María Helena Carey | CC BY-ND 2.0
Photo by María Helena Carey | CC BY-ND 2.0

A piece of fiction Writing 101:

“And don’t come back in ’til I call you! You hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sammy muttered under her breath.

“Babygirl! I said, do you hear me?!”

“I am not a baby girl!”

“Do. You. Hear me?”

“Yes, Mama. I hear you,” she grumbled.

Sammy let the screen door slam behind her, took a few steps and sat down on the front stoop. She kept to her family’s side of the porch. Mr. Johnson, who lived in the other half of the duplex, didn’t like anyone on his side of the porch, especially little girls.

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Home

Mom & Grandma
Mom & Grandma

I moved 21 times before I turned 12. That makes 22 different homes and no, my parents weren’t in the military. 22 apartments but only two school systems. So actually, all that moving wasn’t as disruptive as you might think.

I mean, sure, it was draining. And we did reach a point where we stopped unpacking the essentials and lived out of boxes.

Boxes. Most of us live in them already: big boxes with doors and windows, divided into smaller boxes with doors and archways. And we live out of them too: cabinets, closets, drawers and shelves. And we create them: boxes in our minds and walls in our hearts. When I was a kid, some of our boxes just happened to be made out of cardboard.

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If My Heart had Wings

Four Generations
Four Generations

Some days, I miss her so much I can almost feel her next to me, in front of me…taking my face in her papery hands and drawing me close to kiss my cheek.

She wasn’t always old, though.

We lived a number places together: the Green House in the hills of Granby, an apartment in Simsbury and then, later, a raised ranch further up the street. Wherever she was felt like home to me.

Continue reading “If My Heart had Wings”

He Held the Door

Written in response to  the Weekly Writing Challenge | Fifty:  …write a fifty-word story. Not five thousand, not five hundred, but precisely fifty words. Writing a word limited story was challenging –  I would much rather try to write a 50 word poem. But even so, the story below is true: 

Her grandparents waited in the car while she, 12, ran in to buy their tobacco. Times were different.

On her way out, he held the door.

“Thanks,” she smiled.

“You’re welcome,” he nodded.

She climbed into the backseat.

“That was your father,” grandma said. “He held the door for you.”

© Nichole Liza Q.

Photo by UTKnightCenter | CC BY-ND 2.0 License
Photo by UTKnightCenter | CC BY-ND 2.0 License

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