Words I Never Said: Corrected.

“You know sometimes we ummm, we don't recognize our dreams inside
our reality and uh other times we're not aware of exactly
what's real ya know we walk around day dreaming but the sunshine, the sunshine always is....

2^ndVerse (Marshia)
I used to depend on your eyes to show me the way that I should go
My reality is blurry I'm afraid of being all alone
Your light has been my guide throughout the good and bad
I wish that I had spent a little more attention to my one and only sunshine
(Floacist)
Listen, I'd never leave you yo, I sweared on my grave
Damn what's that I'm feeling dizzy kinda getting faint
But it ain't nothing, didn't sleep that much last night
From watching over you but none less I'm cool I'm fine
I said I'm feeling fine so back up off me I'm alright
I'm here to see my friends and what's up with that blinding light
Said I don't need to lie down

I don't need your help right now
What's up with all the noises

all the running round
You've got it wrong

I'm not the one who needs the help in here
Yo, what's up with you, you're crying I see tears
Yo, what's going on, don't leave, please don't take her out
Said I don't understand, I'm kinda feeling scared now
I said it's getting hard to breathe

getting hard to see
\I'm not too sure anymore

what's going on with me
Please bring her back

connect me

talk just one more time
But it's too late the last exhale is mine

I just wanna see my lovely sunshine(Sunshine)
I just wanna bring back all of my blue skies
And if you take away my rainbow I will cry(cry)
Give me back my sunshine”

I can still vividly see that day that I put this song on repeat and sat on the couch that is in a landfill right now occupying space, and started writing down the lyrics to the second verse. This was one of my favorite songs at the time and the second verse is the verse that spoke heavily to me. It was hard. I felt childish to a degree, as I would go back and forth to the cd player, rewinding lines in hopes that I would pen it right. There was a mission to my madness:

I had planned to find a poetry open mic and spit this. It wasn’t mine. And I never thought anything about it. I wanted the audience to know this song. I wanted FLoetry to know, even if only thru waves of oxygen across the US, that this song had spoken to me. I wanted to share something. My grandfather had been dead for almost a year and after sharing a poem with a large funeral crowd of people and being told I should visit an open mic, I had become mildly obsessed with performing somewhere. I couldn’t lie to myself: What I felt from being up there, speaking past the proverbial 2 funeral minutes, was freedom. I felt like weight was coming off of me and although the weight of the pain of losing a loved one couldn’t be so easily erased, whatever happened up there when I ended that poem and started briefly talking about the man I knew as my grandfather, was exhilarating. It was different. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. What it was exactly, I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint so soon, but the depressed, half suicidal, totally unhappy young 23 year old that resided in me at the time NEEDED it to stay alive. And only time would tell her that.

In the meantime,

I kept rewinding until all those lyrics appeared on my page and even as I did this, I became more connected with the song. I was hearing different parts I hadn’t so intently paid attention to before. I was channeling this second verse and this chorus into my life. The intro portion of the song was what initially drew me into it.

“You know sometimes we ummm, we don't recognize our dreams inside
our reality and uh other times we're not aware of exactly
what's real ya know we walk around day dreaming but the sunshine, the sunshine always is.... “

Our living room was huge. Open. The couches were only a year old and were still in pristine shape. The television was 40 inches, UBER large but perfect for a living room of that size. The patio sliding doors always ushered in bright amounts of light, but I had begun keeping them turned in a way that it blocked out all sunshine. There was no living room table. The couches sat too far apart for it to be cohesive. The walls were slightly bare. There were no end tables. The open space of the living room made for a great dance zone when I was in the mood. But the mood of those days had been consistently sour filled. I was living inside of a big ass open casket.

6850 Brendon Way Drive.
It had become my tomb.

And Myster didn’t like the tomb, so he barely came that way anymore. At this point, my life as I knew it felt like a daily reminder of the worst shit that could ever happen to anyone. And all I wanted was to leave. I was carless, phoneless, jobless. I felt poor, lonely, abandoned. I felt unaccounted for. Like death would be a welcome party that I waited on an invite from. It was difficult. It was hard. But I had not let go of the power of an open mic. I knew I was going, I just didn’t know when or where. But I would have a poem ready for it. And it would be these words, spoken by the Floacist.

I used to depend on your eyes to show me the way that I should go
My reality is blurry I'm afraid of being all alone

My tomb was silently deafening. The alone time, the lack of ability to leave or even call out for help was driving me insane. It felt like forty days of night or maybe solitary confinement. When I would hear him finally turn the key, after days of being missing, a sense of brief relief would come over me. “Maybe he’s coming to take me somewhere.” It never ended up as such. He always left without me. So it was just, my new dog and my tomb of never-ending slow death.

Your light has been my guide throughout the good and bad
I wish that I had spent a little more attention to my one and only sunshine

I had nothing but time on my hands. Nothing but time to think, over think, ponder, go over in my head,etc.……It didn’t take much to realize how many eggs I had put in the basket I thought he and I were weaving together. I put about 3 dozen in there. When it was all said and done, they were all returned to me broken; some without their yolk. I just wanted to go backwards to the day before I ever sat on his lap and let him enter my world.

(Floacist)
Listen, I'd never leave you yo, I sweared on my grave
Damn what's that I'm feeling dizzy kinda getting faint
But it ain't nothing, didn't sleep that much last night
From watching over you but none less I'm cool I'm fine

When he would come home and stay, I would sit up and watch him breathe. I would try to fit my body in the nook of his during the times that he didn’t come home arguing about bullshit. In my mind, as much and as badly as I wanted to leave, I wanted to stay even more. I wanted it to be so simple. That we could grow up together and look backwards on those days and laugh. But too much had happened.

I said I'm feeling fine so back up off me I'm alright
I'm here to see my friends and what's up with that blinding light
Said I don't need to lie down

I don't need your help right now
What's up with all the noises

all the running round
You've got it wrong

I'm not the one who needs the help in here

He would always tell me I needed to get some help from someone. He was thinking more professionally. He thought all the crying I did was funny and at best, a mental problem. What I needed, was for someone to see something in me and help me out. I had no help. I needed someone to say, I love you. I needed someone else because I had exhausted myself trying to provide it for myself day in and day out, but to no avail. I needed convincing that I deserved better than what was happening in my life. But few knew. Outside of the ppl that “assumed” things, no one really knew what was happening in that townhouse. Well, the neighbors knew. The neighbors definitely knew and ironically, one of the neighbors was my ex-boyfriend before I met Myster. His roommate was more concerned with getting in my pants than offering a helping hand….but why should he have??? I would have just said I was ok. As a matter a fact, I did tell him more than once, I was ok.

Yo, what's up with you, you're crying I see tears
Yo, what's going on, don't leave, please don't take her out
Said I don't understand, I'm kinda feeling scared now
I said it's getting hard to breathe

getting hard to see
\I'm not too sure anymore

what's going on with me
Please bring her back

connect me

talk just one more time

I was just lost. All I could do was cry, and cry some more. When I was writing the lyrics to this song down and bracing myself for my debut on the mic, I would cry. I would cry when the music would start, because I knew what she was about to say. And how closely I identified with it. I knew I was sick of this shit. But I had no way out. The lonelies had literally stolen me from me and I sat back and watched. He never noticed that the woman I had become was not even a shell of the woman I used to be. I was nothing more than a nuisance on his eyes and he was nothing more than the person I wanted to show how to love me properly.

But it's too late the last exhale is mine

I never did perform that piece. I ended up writing all of it out, but never did it publically. I was too shy. By the time I had become introduced to the world of open mics, which was only a couple/few months later, I had decided to return with an original piece. I started writing more than I ever had before with the full intent that if I were to perform something, it needed to be mine. At least the first time. I felt like I had something in me to say. My first poem on the mic was called The Conversation. And when I got finished, a rush of emotions quite like the ones from the funeral, had returned. That freedom. I still couldn’t pinpoint what it was at the time. But it would only take a few more graces to the stage before I figured out what it was: Freedom.

A personal freedom unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

My addiction started immediately.

Despite the highs and lows, I have not stopped since. That was 2003.

This is 2013.

Its been ten years.

I’ve experienced a lot, done a lot, been pissed on, pissed off and laughed the entire time. I am no longer that scared, shelled up young woman in search of true love in the wrong closet. I am ten years older. 20 years wiser as compared to. Still without my grandfather and will forever be missing him. And still listening to Sunshine.

It was less than a year before my voice got completely in the speed of the flow of the mic and out 6850. The tombstone. The dead part of me stayed there.

For all I know, she is still around.

But the me that was in there, picking and screaming and kicking to get out, even if it meant thru someone else’s words, has blossomed into someone who won’t dare let another muthafucka silence her or tell her/show her (whether it be by actions/words or subconsciously) what she can and can’t do and/or who she IS or ISNT.

Know that no matter what one may think about me, and I know there are people who think some things…..hell, I think some things about some people, so its only fair…

But know that at the end of it all, I know exactly who I am.

Finally.....the only thing i REALLY want to do besides be an accomplished WRITER, is INSPIRE the hell out of everyone to do whatever it is you want to do....to use the opportunities you have been granted and parlay that into the next step.  To LIVE. ....if i die, having inspired a boatload of people, i will sincerely believe i lived a good life.  If anything i do fails to inspire, i will have wasted a moment, a chance and a prime opportunity.  Believe what you may, but i remember everything that happened in my life pre-jY.  Pre-nsay......and it aint pretty...but its real enough to keep me wanting to INSPIRE.

You may have met me, but i know me.

I am Kendria Travonne “januarieYork” Smith. I used to go by nsaychable, but I outgrew her ass. She still had leftovers from the tomb. As much as I lose, I will win. As much as I win, I will fail. As much as I fail or win, lose or rejoice, I will LIVE…..

I will breathe.

And I will never let anyone take the light from within me again.

I will see my lovely sunshine.

 

The last exhale is indeed mine.

jY

mute

 

I decided I really don’t have anything I want to say right now.

 

 

girls just wanna have fun.

~jY

The Real Truth. #1

Tell the real truth
You still think about me don’t you…..
I still visit your dreams…..
Entering thru the small crack between your eyelids
- Just underneath your lashes
My perfume sizzles inside your nostrils
Making your nose hairs breeze back and forth
I become the oxygen for the duration of your sleep
Tell the truth
You still think about me …..too
Tell me you still remember the way we made love
Like boundaries were broken steps,
Skipped by the rock of our bodies, ……our kisses weren’t just lip glued, they were explosions of underworlds, daring the rest of the mankind to stare wildly at how we bonded …..
Our in and out was more like a live and let go…..let go and live
When you would go in, I’d live….
When I felt you alive, I’d let go….
Pulsating wrists keeping body temps rising to –
-fists, full of hair…sheets…
We would burst orgasms that should have required NASA approval to happen,
Tell me you remember us laughing in the living room
Tell me you still got the rest of the pictures that I only hold one of
Tell me we weren’t just kids
Just reckless kids, pretending to be adults,
Doing grown up shit like tomorrow was a game to play
We decision made against the grain and carved dead ends thru a rain forest that we used to keep each other covered in
Covers balled up on beds, sleeping on different sides, my eyes wide, yours tight and lost ….
Somewhere else
But not like the nows…..
Tell me the now still includes me breaking thru the dawn of how your brain dances when the rest of your body is at ease …..
Tell me you are at your knees to me
Not to her
That you held our first
Not our worst past
Tell me
That I am not just a figment of burned imagination
That I am more than a repressed memory stored on a floppy disc
Ain’t nobody got no time for this, tell me I’m not a mistake !!! …..
A mistake…..
After all the ones we made together
Tell me I….. was not a mistake
And neither were you
…..tell the truth, we were meant to be something but fucked it all up trying too hard to be nothing. ….
And accomplishing just that…..
…..tell me,
You still dream of me….
You still think of me…..
It doesn’t have to be….
Often.
Just sometimes…..because I only think of you sometimes…..
and that’s only because true love never dies
And only briefly,
for a second so short and so quickly moved along,
I wish for you
To tell me
You still love me,
even if that makes you a fool
that you still dream of me…
that you still think of me,
tell me THAT ..
is the real truth.

No Matter What Happens

Please....


Please don't leave me.  





This isn't a world made for life without us
as a duo
this isn't a life made for me
without you as my teammate
cheerleader
even when our arguments come from nowhere

and the silence seems never-ending

even when days blend into the nights
and the celebrations are minus one or the other


There is no dispute
no exception to the rule

i am less the woman i was created to be....
without the world presence
of my mother.


So please.

Please do not leave me.  



********Death travels in three's.....and i've already hit the number 2 button....honestly,  in the recent weeks, i began wondering if was to be the number three.....those thoughts shifted to wondering if i would have to deal with someone in my family, which there is no one left that would't cause me extreme hurt and pain....i've been heavily on my karma lately, both good and bad....i've been guilt ridden by some things and worried about other things....i've been so blessed and so rewarded that it makes me fear what the "down" will be, that i know will eventually come because what is an up without a down??? .......my mom and i have the worst relationship sometimes.....its every thing other than what it should be....sometimes, even though i refer to them as TheFiringSquad, i am so jealous of her and my grandmother, because they have the relationship i wish we had.....they talk, share, are there for each other, go to dr appts with each other, etc, etc.....me and my mom, are secret keepers.....bee keepers with stingers all over us from each other....i have not been the best of daughters....she has not been the friendliest of mothers.....but i don't think for a second our love for each other can be challenged....my mom has gone thru breast cancer and the trials and tribulations that come with it and after it for some years now and i was not apart of her recovery.....i was not even aware as to what was going on.....today i found out my mom went back to the hospital this morning.....she was there last night and i spoke to her.....i dont know what is wrong....it could be minor....it could be anything......but i hate hospitals....i fear hospitals and i know hospitals are where people often go for something tiny and leave out in a big ass hurst..... so i stay fearful the minute i find out a loved one is at one, esp in an emergency situation.......could it just be the flu ? Of course...it could be minor.....i have prayed...i have asked for prayer....and i don't doubt they will be answered....but i live sometimes in the harsh reality of truth as we know it: something that is NOT our friend......and truth is, according to MY beliefs, whenever our number is up, its up....no amount of prayer or promises or tears will stop the inevitable..........i will leave it right there because i do want to watch what i speak into existence....but.....my mom.....as much as we love to hate each other, this is just not a world i want to be in without her living and breathing in it with me.  And i just needed to put that out there for the universe and God to be able to read.  My mom.........needs and wants to be here.
Praying to God that this is all minor and will soon passover. 

KendriaTraVonne Smith.

The Story of Brooklyn

 

Yesterday evening while sitting at my dinette table doing some article editing and journal reading, my 18 year old daughter walked in the door with tears in her eyes. There was nothing unusual about her timing, so I initially didn’t look up from my computer. My chic Dior reading glasses sat at the top of my head and the wine glass of Riesling was collecting condensation around the circular bottom. She walked in quietly at first but when the sound of her multiple key chains slammed against the cherry wood, I rose my head in an angered frenzy, only to see the first of six more tears that would follow. I counted them. Whenever she cries in front of me, oddly enough, as much as I can, I count the tears that fall. It becomes my mission to create a world where each time she has a sad cry, it contains less and less of her pain. By the sixth, my eyes had filled with large droplets and I lost track of the extent of her hurt. Before I could ask what was wrong, she had sat down, veered off into space, blinked and said “he got me pregnant on purpose.”

The crackle in the creation of the that statement stunned my soul to a point where my body naturally reached out to the wine glass nearby, but my frozen stance never allowed my head to turn. The glass of course was knocked over. My laptop was spared but wine spread across the infinite possibilities of the table and dove off over its edge. I didn’t move to wipe it. The emergency logic inside of me kicked in and transferred the laptop to a footstool nearby. Only moments before she walked in had I moved it to the side of my chair for what seemed like absolutely no reason.

I cleared my throat.

She turned and looked at me like she was disappointed in me for not being able to prevent this. My beautiful Brooklyn. I had named her that because of a prior conversation about baby names with friends who had deemed it a “white people’s” name. I laughed at it and vowed to name my first born Brooklyn. She was born shortly after my sixteenth birthday and when they first put her in my arms, she looked at me and tried to smile. She knew me. And I was terrified of her. I spent the rest of my school years determined to beat the odds. I took college classes in the evening, but dropped out due to funding and sitter issues. Eventually I went back and earned a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice. I’ve worked as a probation officer for the last six years and have become the one everyone wants to get but no one wants to assign. I’m hard on the kids in a good way. I make them write their feelings as part of probation. They must keep journals and they have assignments based on their situations that are as required as a clean drop. I make them aware of the possibilities of change. I also run a small column in a free paper. As we sat at the dining table with space and silence between us, my next tear fell hard and fast on a stack of papers that had my newest work on it. This was real life. This wasn’t writing or a probation hearing. I had less to time to come up with a response and anything I said couldn’t be deleted. I could tell she wanted me to say something. I mean, shouldn’t I know what to say. I had two pregnant teens younger than her on my count and besides that, I am known for having good answers. But in this moment..i had nothing.

As determined as I was to be successful, I meant the same thing for Brooklyn. I pushed her in school, enrolled her in arts programs and created an outlet to speak within the confines of our relationship. We sort of grew up together by accident but I was still the authority. I played it well. She was a great honor roll student and as she neared the ending of her high school career, she being scouted by a few colleges that wanted her artistic drawing skills. Yes, she was a drawer and a painter. She had an eye that could capture the slightest wrinkle in ones cheek down to a missing hair on a mouse’s tail. It was an unbelievable but undeniable talent. She was planning for school in New York. She said she loved that city and blamed me because I named her Brooklyn. It was amazing how drawn she was to a place that she’d never been but I counted it as teenage lust for emancipation and supported her desire to seek schooling there, although the city scared me. I had been once for a newspaper writing seminar and hated it.

It was too much bustle and loud noise for me. And how does one sleep there or think there or keep themselves safe? I’m no one’s prude and still love a good time but New York is just scary. I’m much more of a tropical, calming, quiet gal myself.

All these thoughts started scattering thru my head at once. What about school? Why did he do it on purpose? Who is it ?????!!!!! The last I knew, she wasn’t dating anyone anymore. Her most recent boyfriend of the two I had given my blessing on was terminated for breach of contract nearly 6 months ago. His name was Terrance and his faithful gene was still growing.

The other moved to California with his parents as they were both in the military. I had never had much of a problem out of her with boys even though her father was a lost cause. The last I heard from him, he was on his way over with a sack of diapers and a new car seat when she was six months old. I’ve actually seen him on Facebook but I’ve never reached out. For what? She knows all about him and I’ve never talked bad about him to her. She has seen his Facebook as well and consciously decided she was in no interest to meet him now. But for me, in this moment, I was suddenly angered at the fact that he wasn’t here to conjure up the words that were still formulating one slow letter at a time in my head.

While it seemed like an hour had passed between us, it had probably only been two minutes before I snapped out of my trance. Standing to grab napkins and clean my wood table before it stained permanently, I couldn’t help but pour me another glass and take a sip before I’d be willing to back whatever else came out next.

I mustered up,“First of all, who is he and why would he have done it on purpose”?

By this time her face was buried in her hands like she used to do when she was a kid. I smiled thru my tears at the memory while she wasn’t looking.

“Momma, I started sleeping with Terrance”, she said thru her fingers.

“We started talking a few months back and I knew you wouldn’t be happy because of how we had broken up. I was tutoring his sister and that’s how it started.”

I didn’t say anything. I just let her talk and sipped my wine slowly, savoring each flavor as if pieces of my sanity were going with them down the hatch.

“I know you are thinking why didn’t we use condoms, but ma, we both went to the clinic and got tested together and were both clean.”

Great! Now teenagers just go on clinic dates to determine raw sexual encounters. Somehow I felt like I should feel lucky but I couldn’t get past the numbness.

“I told him I got accepted at the Arts Institute of NY.”

Hmm, more info she neglected to tell me. Sip six kills the glass and another is poured.

“He kept telling me he was gonna get me pregnant so I wouldn’t go to NY, but I thought he was just joking. He knows how bad I want to go to THAT school!, she yelled.”

She slammed her wet fists down on the table hard enough to make her keys bounce upwards and yelled “Momma, he got me pregnant on purpose!!! This nigga did it on purpose and I know it !”

The next question was the one I knew was coming. The question I knew she was sure I’d have the perfect answer to, just like I do with my probation kids. I was hoping thru my lightweight Riesling buzz that she would not ask me, at least not right now. But I knew in my gut that she would. I would if I were her.

Hell I did. And just like my mom, back when Brooklyn was nothing more than multiplying cells, I was clueless as to the answer.

“What am I supposed to do now”, she asked softly?

She looked at me and threw the tears off her face in a hand-rage. We stared at each other, eye to eye in silence and equally confused.

She waited for the answer.
I waited for its appearance. But all I could do was lean over, grab the bottle and drink straight from it. Tears hit the neck right above where my grip. When I sat it down on the table I looked up and she was still staring at me. Her eyes told me that she was ok with my initial response but that she was muted until I had some concrete input.

My brain did a quick-scan of a multitude of events. The election and how women’s rights are being challenged. I thought of how I grew up and what little I knew about loving myself, my body and especially my choices. Most of all, I thought of the women I am today and the young women I had spent the last 18 years raising. Then I took another sip and said, “Brooklyn, in life we have regrets. Many of them are avoidable if we simply take time to think our actions thru. What is happening in your life right now is out of my control, but not out of yours. Take some real time, alone time, and weigh all of your options AND their potential repercussions. What can you make work and how? What do you want and why? Ask yourself real questions and give yourself real answers. When you figure it out something, even if its multiple choices, come back and talk to me about what you think. But in this raw emotion of it all, do not do anything except breathe and search within.”

Her shoulders fell back and she slumped in the chair like I said just what she needed to hear. Still in silence, she got up and pushed the chair in.

“I’m gonna take a shower and lay down mom. I have to study for midterms before bed.”

She walked off. I picked up my laptop and went back to work as the showerhead turned on full blast. The topic of my story: Women Who Have Abortions & The Children They Never Stop Thinking About.

When Love Hurts: The Neck Pain Edition

 

This morning (and all thru the night), I awoke to THE WORST pain in my neck….ever!!!!! It ventures from the entire right side of my neck, down into my back and spread across my right shoulder…..it’s a heavy pain….

the type of pain that makes me want to just throw my head over and look down all day…I am about to set sail on a venture of meetings and grab a heating pad in the process, but when I say I am in pain, I mean I am in PAIN!  I can’t hardly turn…I was supposed to go sledding today   Which really pisses me off…it woke me up several times all night, so I lightweight expected it this morning, but this pain is such that it hurts to sit up from laying down. My bed is too soft….its still brand new, but its too soft….and last night, Houston we hit a plateau …. geeez…..

when I tried to reason with myself on whether or not I have ever felt such a hefty dosage of intrusion on one’s ability to keep their head up and even swallow, it reminded me of 7th Grade….

Her name was Leona Love…..and my life was settling into the movie script it has been known to be. 

The stuff that happens to me should never happen outside of a movie…my life has been known to take cues from the 80’s movie “Better Off Dead”. ….stuff that makes me say “why is this even happening or better yet, HOW did this come to happen??” 

Back to seventh grade and Leona Love….I still remember her name….she a very dark skinned girl with short hair that wasn’t considered “cute" or “good”. ….she was picked on and bullied about her looks.  …..we started off cool….I think she was either in a foster home or adopted….I can’t remember much about her full situation…..my recollection, inspired by the pain in my neck/back that I am suffering from as I type, is about that day in the lunchroom…

Shortridge Junior High…..we were probably 12/13 years old….

….The movie that this will begin to parallel (and ultimately drift off into its own) is called “3 O'clock High” …..another 80’s movie (I think…maybe 90’s)….

it was about a bully and a “wimpy” guy that almost accidentally ended up fighting him…..with the whole school waiting for 3 (the time of the fight) to watch….it was one of my favorite movies…..back to that day in the cafeteria….

Leona wasn’t a “big” girl, but she was not small and she was a couple sizes bigger than me and taller than me as well…I don’t remember how our argument started….I just remember us being at our circular tables in the lunchroom, cussing and it getting louder and louder…..

I think I may have said something about her and she heard me…and challenged me to say it again…..I remember yelling at her about having roaches…..I remember the whole side of the cafeteria listening and egging us on, until someone suggested we fight…..I don’t think either of us were prepared for that…..on her end, I think she was tired of being bullied and that day wasn’t the day to fuck with her…..on my end, I think I was talking because other people were and was the only person she heard….I had to stand my ground, but I wasn’t prepared to fight…..I had never even been in one….

Both of our pre-teen brains probably were thinking nooooo, not a fight, as remember, we were once cool….only days prior….but the peer pressure was in effect…..too many witnesses were around and whoever backed off first would look like the punk…..we were both in seventh grade, trying not to feel like the small fish in a big pond to the eighth grade know-it-alls…..

and just like that, a fight was scheduled……3 O'clock (just like the movie) and in the empty parking lot across the street from the school so that, as suggested by others nearby, we wouldn’t get suspended because we wouldn’t be on school property…….

and just like the movie, the hours zoomed by….before I knew it, the school bell was ringing and I was needing to make a decision about whether to get on the bus or go to the lot…..that lot was full of broken glass and gravel (now it houses an apt bldg) …..I didn’t want to fight her…..as time drew near, I wanted to call a truce but I cant remember what techniques I tried and failed at…..as the ending result reminds of how I feel right now…..

I went to the lot….I grabbed big rocks, small rocks…..all kinds of rocks to throw at her….I put together a blueprint in my mind that if I hit her with a rock, I could knock her down and stomp on her…..then run…..what I didn’t put in my head was how many people were coming to watch this fight…..the movie is in full force at this point….it was like the entire school was there…..in my head, I can see them all marching from Shortridge over to that middle sized rock where I stood awaiting my fate….some of my friends came over there and urged me to walk away….but it was tooooo many people standing around……finally, she showed up…..it was us in the circle……

yelling and cussing at each other endlessly as the crowd circling us got more and more rowdy…..someone said fight already…..we pushed each other around for a bit, clearly not wanting to fight each other but both too far in middle to turn back…..eventually, someone put sticks on our shoulder…..

then people started pushing us into each other…..

this went on for awhile and eventually, the pushing from other people worked and we started fighting…..we slung fists and grabbed hair while the crowd yelled and screamed….

and then

I fell……bad bad baaaaad thing….I would have much rather have knocked her out with the rocks that I ultimately tossed out of my pocket….while I was down, about to stand back up, instead of jumping on me and taking advantage of the situation…

she used her weight advantage to her gain…..

and she grabbed me and sat on me.

0_o

She sat, her entire body and weight, on my neck.

there I was, defeated, embarrassed and crying….in pain…..the ultimate loser of the fight but worst than that, I had no one helping to get this heifa off of me…..I couldn’t push her off me….

she was simply too heavy….I sat, bent over, for what seemed like forever, while the crowd watched until someone finally got her off of me

or maybe she  got tired of sitting and got up on her own….

my memories of Leona Love pretty much end after that….

I walked home, with my best friend at the time, Shakira, crying and in pain….my neck felt like all it could do was slump forward….I didn’t think it would ever get right

I didn’t ever expect to get over this fight…..or the embarrassment….I dreaded going back to school…..this isn't how the movie ended….in the movie, the wimpy person wins…I lost….

and I was hurt…..

and my neck today

feels like that day…..I have not felt this pain since then, but instantly was reminded of it when I gauged the levels of pain…..this is that LeonaPain……that NeckSit Shit…When Love Hurts Pain…..it HURTS……a lot….and it did that day…..

when I was a 7th grader at Shortridge….and accidentally wound up fighting Leona in the parking lot across the street….and….got sat on …

but soon

just like then

I’ll stand again. 

*shrug*

 

jY

“They Say All Poets Must Have Unrequited Love”

 

I have always had a problem with letting go.  I’m like an “emotional hoarder”, so to speak.  Without going into my psycho-analysis as to why in almost 34 years, I have not completely mastered letting go of people and things until recently, I will say my learned trait was to hold on. 

To sink together until there was nothing left to bridge.

To ride it until the wheels fall off and crumble like broken Flintstone tires…..

letting go has never been something I was a master at. Then there was us.

We met when I was 12.  I spoke briefly of him in my last blog….his name is Devon.  From 12 until 17, we had a love/hate relationship.  He used me for sex (a lil after 12 tho) and I used him for the those brief moments of “he really likes me’’ that only existed as long as our trip to the alley did.  Ironically, we had sex in his car, in the garage that is in my backyard.  Yes…..I now live in the house that we used to mess around in back of.  Interesting concept.

Moving along quickly, we got into a relationship that was no better than our “faulty friendship” but I learned just how far I was willing to go for love and just how much I wouldn’t let go…..the things that happened between us built the foundation for my life right now….so much happened that I could never just discuss in a blog.  If that part of my life is meant to be shared, either another poem will come along to give it reason or perhaps it will make it to the book.  Either way, I won’t bother going thru all the things we went thru.  A lie I told him when I was 17, in hopes of making him believe that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE REALLY liked me and wanted to be with me, would come back to haunt me in our relationship and go on to create some life changing decisions that I would not find out about until many years later.  I told a lie that became the reason why today I am not a mother.  And that is a hard pill to swallow.  It has been a bitter pill to swallow.

Our relationship ended after we moved in together and created a baby.  He was not willing to give me the love I needed from him.  It was that same damn love I searched for in his 16 year old eyes when I was 14 and behind the house with him.  No matter how much we laughed and played house with each other, I couldn’t get him to open up to me….to share with me…..to BE with me…..so for once, I broke it off.. ….it will go down in history as one of the few times I knew how to let go.  Or did it……

I never really did let go.  For the next eight years, we would be off and on with each other, with him now in pursuit of reciprocity of affection.  But I couldn’t give it to him…..I was scarred, scorned, hurt and just shy of disfigured (not from fighting….we didn’t do that)……he had left me out in the cold one too many times for me to be able to access the love I still had for him deep within my heart.  But I give him credit…..he kept trying.  Our child together didn’t last.

And he was crushed.  One night, he begged me to come over….at the time, I was refusing to see him…..he offered me 1400 dollars to come over and listen to him vent to me and  then I could leave. No strings attached.  I fell for it.  Went over, sat on his couch and listened to him crying and hurting across the couch from me.  It hurt me back.  But I pushed those feelings deep down and didn’t let so much as an eyelash fall.  After he was done, I left….1400 richer, in the car he bought for me prior to.  I took that money and bought two of the baddest couches in VCF.  When I first saw them, I fell in love with them instantly.  They were large, plush, comfy and rich looking….the design on them was beautiful, the color was neutral and I just kept coming back to them no matter what other aisle I went to in the store. 

Those couches became my refuge.  Ironically, they would go on to host Devon’s sitting ass many many times afterwards.  No matter what relationship I was in or he was in, somehow we made it back to each other, in attempts to hold onto a friendship that had somehow blossomed over the years….but our friendship always drifted into sexual advances or “love” advances, the latter I was not interested in.  Our friendship didn’t work.  These couches also hosted Randy’s ass.  A detrimental relationship that almost led to the death of me.  His friend Paul, who I still see, sat on them.  So did my ex-roommate (who would go on to sleeping with randy).  The couches survived a shitload of people who absolutely meant me no good.

But Devon was the silent purchaser.  These couches were purchased on the grave of my unborn.  They stayed thru the demise, rise and the final burial of my relationship and any possible friendship with Devon.  We do not speak to each other and haven’t for almost 3 years now. This is the longest it has ever been.  He finally got over me.  He finally stopped pursuing me.  He got married, he started his own family.  Our unborn is not even a memory anymore, which I can’t say much. I don’t sit around thinking about it and I’m not gonna answer the burning question a potential reader of this blog may have (what happened to the baby). Draw your own conclusion. * shrug * But these couches are still here.

Still connecting me to a portion of my life I don’t want to live in anymore. Finally. The last of the ghosts of ex-boyfriends past is being thrown out without so much as a chair replacement. 

These couches, purchased with a mixture of emotions of hurt, hate, disappointment and love, have finally met the end of the road.  I had high hopes to get them out quickly and painlessly.  I contacted ppl who for one reason or another were not able to assist me.  Its like I woke up, looked at them and made a split second decision that I no longer wanted Devon (or randy or the roommate) living with me.  I no longer wanted to live with the child that did not make it here. I no longer wanted to leave these pillows in here.  I just want to let go.  Almost a resurrection of me and destroying of my prior world.  Devon has moved on.  Though we live across the street from each other and tend to come outside at the same time often, we don’t speak or acknowledge each other.  I see his wife every morning when she takes their five year old to school. But when I walk in and see these couches, sometimes, not always, but sometimes, I am nauseated by it. 

By the memory of it all.

Plus they are old.  They are dirty. The dogs have chewed them.  In every possible way, God has directed me to let go of them.  And still I have maintained the love for their comfort.  How great it is to sleep on them. And it used to be.  But its over.  Time is up. The sleep is no longer peaceful and they aren’t rich and comfy looking any more.  The springs make noise and the pillows don’t sit right anymore.  When I lived in what used to be called The Summit, a high rise on Meridian, I stayed on the 15th floor.  The only way to get moved in is to use the freight elevator.  My couches were so big, that I was only able to fit the loveseat in my apt for 2 years (until I moved out).  You would have just had to see the tears in my eyes when we realized there was nothing we could do to get that couch on that freight elevator and no one was willing to walk fifteen flights plus one of stairs with a heavy ass LARGE couch.  The couch spent the next two years in my mothers garage.  Our reunion was a simple day of blessings.  That was five years ago.

Today, the couch that once would not fit on the freight, is now sitting on my porch looking pathetic.  It feels like a circus.  The couch has been there for a lil over 2 weeks…I initially moved it to the porch on the first day I thought I had some help getting  rid of it.  At this point, it has been snowed on and probably rained on.  There is absolutely no chance for recovery at this point.  The couch is not salvageable.  Its over for it.  Its sad.  I hate coming home and seeing it still sitting there….partly because of how ghetto it looks and partly because of all the memories associated with it. It’s a sad final end to what a plethora of love, pain and strange things. 

I don’t know when I will get it moved.  The snow makes it inconvenient to get it to the curb and hope the trashman will take it with him and its like finding a man with a truck in Indianapolis is the one thing I don’t qualify for…..if I was still stripping, I bet I could find some help, quick and easy.   Lol but its all good.  Looking at my porch, there is not just a couch sitting there.

There is a lifetime there.  The pillows are wet and about to mildewed and funky smelling and the cost to get someone to come pick it up is $200 0_o   Idk how this couch will get moved or why its so difficult to get rid of it, but when the loveseat goes, I pray to God that I don’t have this same problem.  Either way, at the end of it all, I am moving beyond this couch.

I don’t know when I will replace them.  I don’t know if I even will.  I’m no longer hosting parties and shit as I have realized a lot about myself, people and my need for whole acceptance.  The result doesn’t include a lot of company ! LOL…..but the one thing I DO know ……is when this couch is carried away to where ever dead couches go, I will not miss it.

I will not mourn it.  For the mourning is in effect every fucking time I pull up outside and its sitting on my porch looking ridiculous.  But the letting go…..

The letting go, which I have done a bit of this year, is abundant.

I am letting go ……

…..of more than a couch.  I am letting go of a child…..a first love…..a friendship…..a relationship……a decision….a thought…..a memory…..a moment in time….

I am letting go of all of us….I am the only one likely still stuck in this strange twilight zone of emotional contempt.

but I’m finally, at nearly 34, becoming more of ME.  As I sit here listening to one of my favorite songs, Terrance Trent D’arby’s “Holding on to You”, I am challenged by this line in the song….

“ they say all poets must have an unrequited love” ……

these couches are the product of unrequited love….from them to me and from me to them…..no one is blameless here. But its time to bury the remains of the death of alluhdis.

Thank you Devon………thank you Randy…..thanks Frenchy….and any/all in between….and thank you to whom ever is the person designed to take this couch out of my life for the last time.

Finally,

to the child who’s death would inadvertently become the reason I had brand new furniture…

…I hope you know my name, if I see you heaven.