Her daughter (complicated) her husband (ugh) and their three children (perfect, so far) had let her know at the very last minute that they would not be joining her this weekend at the very last minute. This, after she’d told them for weeks of the preparations she was making for their arrival: children’s food glowing neon in the cupboards, programming sports channels & Disney into the television, buying little cots and discount board games, bleaching every surface in reach, the like. She was not the sort of woman to hide her effort. But, depending on who she listened to, her daughter, her unfortunate husband, and the children had either had something come up, “weren’t up to it,” had some kind of a bug, or… just didn’t want to spend time with her. She told them not to worry on the phone, and prepared space in her heart for the holding of yet another grudge.
It is sunny today, almost too bright, with a cool breeze wandering through the pines & beach roses. She stretched her legs out, long – she wanted to feel it – and leaned back, pushing up plastic sunglasses to move white suncream over her face. Her daughter was always nagging her to get her shoulders, her legs – she scoffed at her. The woman was too old for skin cancer, she insisted. She’d made it this far. And besides, she could use the color. Good thing she’s not here, the woman supposed. She pats the water-warped paperback on the table next to her and melts into the lounger, the vinyl straps leaving red marks in her thinning skin.
Minutes pass. An hour, maybe. The sky is still blue, the clouds have shifted – the sun hangs white and hot, breathing, now, a few inches past previous. A man lumbers, barefoot, across the cement, in khaki shorts, and the woman knows, immediately, what he’s intent on doing. A little girl tags behind him, a blue swim-skirt and top, picking at her braided hair. She looks like her daughter, or like her daughter did. She slides up her sunglasses and waits.
The little girl keeps glancing at her, nervous. The woman lets her, crosses her legs, and picks up her paperback.
The man shuffles his feet to the edge of the pool until his toes dangle over the edge. The girl leans into a lung and brings her arms up above her head, rigid, locking her thumbs together.
No diving, the woman thinks.
The man crashes into the water, a seismic event. The girl slides, feet splashing behind her, a dolphin. The woman lets them.
She was walking down the aisle in a big box store when it called out to her, the black leather bound journal with unlined white pages. This was the last place she expected to hear this call, but it was undeniable. She picked up the book, felt its pulse in her hand, and carefully placed it into her cart. On the ride home, she could feel its warm presence radiating from the bottom of a bag of assorted groceries and household goods. By the time she got the grocery bags onto the counter top of her kitchen, she was transfixed. She dug deep into one of the bags and instinctively, her hand landed on the journal which now felt hot to the touch. Almost in a trance and forgetting the cold groceries, she lifted the book to her chest, placed it over her heart, and walked into the other room.
Conversion Exercise #2:
Having been on her own for the better part of high school, and even though she had no real financial plan in place, she enrolled in college. Scholarships, student loans, and savings got her through two point five semesters when finally a bill came that she could not cover. Defeated, she put a moving van onto her charge card and filled it with everything she owned including her beloved cat, Phantom. No longer speaking to her one living parent, she had nowhere to go. The van was home, for now. Knowing this, she made it as livable as possible. She set up her mattresses complete with sheets, a blanket, a duvet, and decorative throw pillows. It was the late 1990’s and the color scheme was lavender and grey. She made a night table out of a storage crate on which she placed a battery operated lamp, her discman, and a bottle of Evian. In front of the night table, she placed Phantom’s bed in which he curled up, unbothered and purring. She didn’t have an actual home anymore, but she had a hometown and her instincts sent her in that direction. As she drove “home” on the highway, she approached a green sign that indicated an upcoming right turn would lead to Manhattan, New York. While her mind told her to stay on the path, her heart guided her left hand to the blinker control and switched it on. She turned the wheel to the right and took the exit, changing not only the course of the van, but of her entire life.
He brought friends over sometimes. Friends on probation; for curb-stomping a girlfriend, for throwing a house party, for raping. He was like his friends. He just had a lawyer for a mother and enough money for a clean record.
However, something changed one night, the night he got back from court and his case was dismissed. He was struck by lightening or maybe a premonition. I like to believe he saw his life–Teenage Boy Found Dead, Drugs Suspected–Teenage boy sentenced to life without parole–Teenage Boy Breaks His Mother’s Heart. He began to put in effort: school, hockey, relationships. He stopped sneaking out, stopped cheating, stopped hurting his sisters. He seemed happier, livelier, and more fulfilled than ever before. And, for the first time in a long time, I was proud of him.
Exercise #2:
“You know fluoride is bad for you, right? Why aren’t you trying to remove that from the water instead?” Rich asked her, after she told him about her internship with EPA.
She rolled her eyes before downing another nip of Dr. McGillicuddy’s. She always got tipsy when she visited Rich. Maybe it made the sex better, or maybe she couldn’t stand him while she was sober. He was an anti-vax Trump supporter who was slightly racist, despite being black and having parents from the DR. But she couldn’t quit him; he was 6’1 and made of pure muscle. Even the new gun safe in his bedroom didn’t stop her. He finished his whiskey before leaning over and kissing her sloppily, much more drunk than she was. She still had to drive home in an hour.
Soon, their activities moved to the bedroom, although tonight things were moving slower. He never dove into sex with her, they always talked, but tonight they had talked and drank for a long time, and she was anxious about her dad calling. Her head hung over the side of the bed as he moved on top of her, his muscular body glistening with sweat. She closed her eyes, hoping he wouldn’t want to do anal. She was too drunk and she wanted to go home. With her eyes closed, she could pretend he was someone else; someone who called her “beautiful” or “pretty,” instead of “fucking sexy.” Rich always took forever to finish, so these drunken fantasies would have to soothe her.
A bubble surrounded her. This bubble was special. The bubble that only let certain people in, people whom it trusted. It’s almost like this bubble had a mind separate from the one it surrounded. “Please let them in,” she said desperately. “It’s getting lonely in here.” The bubble didn’t budge. She tried walking up to other people, hoping for the bubble to let them into her space. But nothing happened. Walls were caving in on her. Or should I say the bubble was caving in on her? She placed her hands against the boundary and pushed. She pushed so hard that the boundary expanded. She kept pushing further and further, and finally, the bubble popped. She sighed a huge relief and ran to all the other people whom she tried to let into her bubble. Eventually, she became close with those other people. ‘I don’t need the bubble anymore’ she thought. But little did she know, that she was gonna be wrong. She now sits alone, in a corner of a room. She doesn’t talk to anyone anymore. And she realizes why she needed the bubble.
Conversion exercise 2:
She runs around in the kitchen. She runs so much that she looks like the hare speeding in the race of the tortoise and the hare. She runs to the fridge and pulls out two big tomatoes. She slices and slices quickly but carefully. She looks for the meat. it’s not on the counter. “Honey!” she shouts, “You were supposed to take the salmon out of the out!” She sighs and opens the freezer. Her fingers hover over the drawer and she grasps it. She pulls the drawer out. Inside the drawer is a plastic package. This plastic package is cold with little icicles covering it. She picks it up and places it on the counter. She grabs another knife and slices through the package. There’s the salmon. Frozen, bright pink, and very very cold. She places it in a dish and opens the microwave. And hits the defrost button. Now she has to wait and wait. She doesn’t like standing there like a lump. She now feels like the tortoise.
Exercise 1-
She slowly lifts the warmed glass to her lips, savoring every moment. The steamed blend of cinnamon and chai leaves a heat in her body. Within a single sip, she remembers all the chais she has drunk to distract herself from the breakup. With leaves blowing in her hair, she strides through the street. The store standing in front of her calls to her. She places her hand on the door, feeling the weight, and pulls. The anxiety hits her as she walks the doorway. She wonders where she should even begin as she looks out at a crowd of people and lines of shelves, slowly being stripped of their items.
Exercise 2- After opening the cabinet, she pulls out a shiny, golden trophy of some kind. It is so bright she can almost see her reflection in it, like it has been untouched for years. “Come over here!” She exclaims as her friends rush over to see what she has found. One by one, they each take turns holding the medal and making speeches. They list the usual; who they’d like to thank, who they would not like to thank, and anything else that comes to mind. They all get their picture taken with the award, each thinking to themselves how they can achieve it. A different friend places the trophy back into the cabinet and they run into the kitchen, onto the next thing, yet the trophy never leaves their minds.
Exercise 1:
The clock strikes midnight but the bells haven’t chimed yet. She knows they have a delay of a few minutes. They never move though, they haven’t in a very long time but every night the melodic sounds of the bells reverberate through the campus. Maybe they live in a different dimension than the bells. Perhaps the bells are a collective memory from a time when life was less silent. Sometimes she dreams about leaving the library and passing the chapel when the bells chime. She’d see a person standing up there in the tower working the mechanics of the bells like a ghost. But that’s just what it is, a dream. A disorienting fog slowly travels over the green patches leading up to the library as she makes her way back to her room. The world resembles a Poe story come to live. Her head starts to spin like a carousel and it makes her feel like she is waltzing over campus to a song that no one seems to hear but her. The street lights barely illuminate the concrete path in front of her. The bells chime and she reminisces about a time when sounds not only existed internally. She bells don’t move but she still hears the bells’ echo like it’s whispering directly into her ear. The deafening silence is infinite.
Exercise 2:
It was dark, so dark that she could barely make out the person in front of her. The smoke made her eyes water and not for the first time did she wonder how she’s gotten herself into this situation. She should have turned around the second she stood in that dirty back alley knocking on a metal door. The door opened immediately and she was greeted by someone who she assumed was a bouncer but when she showed him her ID, he just laughed and closed the heavy door behind her. For the last five minutes, she’s been stalking through a room that she assumed to be an empty dancefloor. They come to a halt in front of another door and she can see light shining through the gaps. Deep male voices reverberate through the thin wood. This is out of her comfort zone and she wishes to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but she is also existed for the unknown possibilities that this world offers.
In a serene village embraced by rolling hills, Nia found solace in poetry and art from a tender age. Her heart resonated with the rhythmic verses and vibrant canvases.As she matured, Nia’s passion for poetry deepened. She immersed herself in the verses of renowned poets, finding solace in their words. Poetry wasn’t just an art form for Nia; it was a doorway to boundless imagination and emotion.
Nia dreamt of a life painted with the colors of art. She imagined wandering through sunlit meadows, penning verses inspired by nature’s beauty. She longed for a community of kindred spirits, where creativity sparked like wildfire.
Amidst her love for poetry, Nia’s heart was captivated by her first love. He was a boy with eyes like the ocean and a smile that warmed her soul. Through her verses, Nia idealized him, seeing in him the embodiment of goodness and beauty.
Their love burned brightly, fueled by stolen glances and whispered confessions. He was Nia’s muse, her inspiration.
But as time passed, their love faltered, like petals falling from a wilting flower.
He was a pain-giving thorn a flower-lover like her never deserved. But she never acknowledged the pain he gave her. She idealised him to her core.
Nia held onto memories, cherishing each moment as if it were a precious gem.
In the years that followed, Nia continued to write, her words infused with the essence of her first love. She couldn’t let him go, for in her eyes, he would forever embody love and beauty.
Guided by the hues of art and the melodies of poetry, Nia found beauty in every corner of life. Though her first love faded, his essence remained in the verses she penned, forever her muse, forever her inspiration.
As they say, “If an artists falls in love with you, you can never die ! Nothing can separate you from them, not even death”
Exercise #2
The Light Within Darkness
In the softly lit hospital room, the air was charged with anticipation as Mark and Emily cradled their newborn daughter in their arms. Their hearts overflowed with a kaleidoscope of emotions – joy, love, and boundless hope for the future. Their daughter, wrapped snugly in a pink blanket, lay nestled against Emily’s chest, her delicate features bathed in the warm glow of the room.
Mark’s gaze lingered on his daughter’s face, marveling at her perfect little nose and the way her tiny fingers curled around his own. He felt a surge of pride and protectiveness wash over him as he held her close, knowing that he would do anything to keep her safe and happy.
Emily’s eyes brimmed with tears of sheer happiness as she looked down at her daughter, her heart overflowing with love. She whispered words of endearment, promising to always be there for her, to guide her through life’s ups and downs.
But amidst the euphoria, there lingered a faint shadow of uncertainty – a niggling doubt that refused to be ignored. As the minutes stretched into hours, Mark and Emily waited anxiously for the doctor to return with the results of their daughter’s tests.
When the door finally swung open, the doctor’s somber expression spoke volumes. Mark’s heart sank as the words tumbled out – their daughter was blind. Emily felt as if the ground had been ripped out from under her, her world crumbling around her as she struggled to comprehend the news.
In that moment, grief washed over them like a tidal wave, threatening to drown out the joy they had felt just moments before. How could this be happening? How could their daughter be robbed of the gift of sight, condemned to a world of darkness?
As they held their daughter close, tears streaming down their cheeks, Mark and Emily vowed to be her guiding light – to show her that despite the darkness that surrounded her, there was still beauty to be found in the world. And as they gazed into her unseeing eyes, they knew that she would always be their little miracle, their beacon of hope in a world fraught with uncertainty.
Margot said she found the box in a thrift store. That means it’s something of a nomad—shifting from owner to owner, store to store, belonging and then not. It’s motherless but a mother itself: a tiny, clay queen of hearts loose in its womb. If you shake it hard enough you can almost taste the emptiness of where a wedding ring used to be. Maybe a ruby. If you open it, it can speak.
Tony, it says, grew up in Brooklyn and started smoking when he was thirteen. He was handsome—the type of man you stare after on the street. A weekend in late July in his late twenties, he took a flight out of JFK to Las Vegas, a few hundred dollars in his pocket that he got from his most recent job that were itching to be spent. Dirty money isn’t dirty if you gamble it all away.
I see him pass by the windowsill that I sit in; newly made and shiny. There’s still something childlike about him—eager, wide-eyed, in need of a haircut. I want to smile. He’s headed to the casino to do lines with the other guys in the bathroom and make them lose games of blackjack by whispering fake promises in their ears. By six o’clock he’s lost a hundred dollars on one slot machine but won it back twofold on another. By eight, he’s pulled into a poker game and the dealer meets his eyes.
It’s then, I think, that Tony starts to think about buying the ring that he’d eventually stash inside me. He’s a romantic really, my Tony. You wouldn’t know that just from looking at him.
It’s then he starts playing two games at once: one with cards, and one with glances. A two-player game. The dealer has dark eyes and darker hair and Tony loses two rounds of poker just thinking about how warm that face might be between his fingertips. By nine o’clock a waitress in a plaid dress brings them all drinks, and Tony knocks his back, feeling his face loosen and a smile fall into place. By ten o’clock he’s got the dealer pinned to a brick wall outside the casino, and the night air is dusty, smelling like smoke and four-letter words.
He sees me in the very same windowsill early the next morning. Walks in and cups me in his hand, then carries me around in his pocket for months before I’m put to good use. A ring is taken out of me and put on a finger, and it’s then I know I have been a good mother.
This was all in the 1920s. Before the great depression and before Tony’s dealer found him slumped on the bathroom floor with red eyes and limp wrists. Before I was put back on a shelf, to be taken home by a little girl who crafts my child—a tiny, clay queen of hearts—to put inside my womb.
This isn’t the only story I have to tell. It’s just my favorite.
There’s an outbreak of pink-eye at the elementary school. Theresa hopes her daughter won’t catch it, but in the back of the auditorium, her daughter is pressing her eye, brown and gelatinous, to her best friend’s. Everyone else has pink-eye and they want it, too. They are little girls and they hate being left out.
In the car, Theresa asks her daughter how her day was, and she replies from the backseat that it was good; she got pink-eye. Theresa makes a U-turn for the Oakland hospital.
They give her eye drops. The child starts crying because she’s scared of putting something foreign in her eye. Theresa says that pink-eye is already something foreign.
They pull over by the Wendy’s on Broadway. “It’ll be fine.” Theresa says. “It doesn’t hurt.” She has to plead with her daughter for the better part of half an hour before the eight-year-old lets her head be tipped back, clear liquid dripping out of the bottle like poison coating her retinas.
When the child opens her eyes, the world is blue like heaven.
11 responses to “Conversion Exercises (Weds)”
The woman is intent on having a good day.
Her daughter (complicated) her husband (ugh) and their three children (perfect, so far) had let her know at the very last minute that they would not be joining her this weekend at the very last minute. This, after she’d told them for weeks of the preparations she was making for their arrival: children’s food glowing neon in the cupboards, programming sports channels & Disney into the television, buying little cots and discount board games, bleaching every surface in reach, the like. She was not the sort of woman to hide her effort. But, depending on who she listened to, her daughter, her unfortunate husband, and the children had either had something come up, “weren’t up to it,” had some kind of a bug, or… just didn’t want to spend time with her. She told them not to worry on the phone, and prepared space in her heart for the holding of yet another grudge.
It is sunny today, almost too bright, with a cool breeze wandering through the pines & beach roses. She stretched her legs out, long – she wanted to feel it – and leaned back, pushing up plastic sunglasses to move white suncream over her face. Her daughter was always nagging her to get her shoulders, her legs – she scoffed at her. The woman was too old for skin cancer, she insisted. She’d made it this far. And besides, she could use the color. Good thing she’s not here, the woman supposed. She pats the water-warped paperback on the table next to her and melts into the lounger, the vinyl straps leaving red marks in her thinning skin.
Minutes pass. An hour, maybe. The sky is still blue, the clouds have shifted – the sun hangs white and hot, breathing, now, a few inches past previous. A man lumbers, barefoot, across the cement, in khaki shorts, and the woman knows, immediately, what he’s intent on doing. A little girl tags behind him, a blue swim-skirt and top, picking at her braided hair. She looks like her daughter, or like her daughter did. She slides up her sunglasses and waits.
The little girl keeps glancing at her, nervous. The woman lets her, crosses her legs, and picks up her paperback.
The man shuffles his feet to the edge of the pool until his toes dangle over the edge. The girl leans into a lung and brings her arms up above her head, rigid, locking her thumbs together.
No diving, the woman thinks.
The man crashes into the water, a seismic event. The girl slides, feet splashing behind her, a dolphin. The woman lets them.
^ Exercise 1
Just kidding: 2. Apologies.
Conversion Exercise #1:
She was walking down the aisle in a big box store when it called out to her, the black leather bound journal with unlined white pages. This was the last place she expected to hear this call, but it was undeniable. She picked up the book, felt its pulse in her hand, and carefully placed it into her cart. On the ride home, she could feel its warm presence radiating from the bottom of a bag of assorted groceries and household goods. By the time she got the grocery bags onto the counter top of her kitchen, she was transfixed. She dug deep into one of the bags and instinctively, her hand landed on the journal which now felt hot to the touch. Almost in a trance and forgetting the cold groceries, she lifted the book to her chest, placed it over her heart, and walked into the other room.
Conversion Exercise #2:
Having been on her own for the better part of high school, and even though she had no real financial plan in place, she enrolled in college. Scholarships, student loans, and savings got her through two point five semesters when finally a bill came that she could not cover. Defeated, she put a moving van onto her charge card and filled it with everything she owned including her beloved cat, Phantom. No longer speaking to her one living parent, she had nowhere to go. The van was home, for now. Knowing this, she made it as livable as possible. She set up her mattresses complete with sheets, a blanket, a duvet, and decorative throw pillows. It was the late 1990’s and the color scheme was lavender and grey. She made a night table out of a storage crate on which she placed a battery operated lamp, her discman, and a bottle of Evian. In front of the night table, she placed Phantom’s bed in which he curled up, unbothered and purring. She didn’t have an actual home anymore, but she had a hometown and her instincts sent her in that direction. As she drove “home” on the highway, she approached a green sign that indicated an upcoming right turn would lead to Manhattan, New York. While her mind told her to stay on the path, her heart guided her left hand to the blinker control and switched it on. She turned the wheel to the right and took the exit, changing not only the course of the van, but of her entire life.
Exercise #1:
He brought friends over sometimes. Friends on probation; for curb-stomping a girlfriend, for throwing a house party, for raping. He was like his friends. He just had a lawyer for a mother and enough money for a clean record.
However, something changed one night, the night he got back from court and his case was dismissed. He was struck by lightening or maybe a premonition. I like to believe he saw his life–Teenage Boy Found Dead, Drugs Suspected–Teenage boy sentenced to life without parole–Teenage Boy Breaks His Mother’s Heart. He began to put in effort: school, hockey, relationships. He stopped sneaking out, stopped cheating, stopped hurting his sisters. He seemed happier, livelier, and more fulfilled than ever before. And, for the first time in a long time, I was proud of him.
Exercise #2:
“You know fluoride is bad for you, right? Why aren’t you trying to remove that from the water instead?” Rich asked her, after she told him about her internship with EPA.
She rolled her eyes before downing another nip of Dr. McGillicuddy’s. She always got tipsy when she visited Rich. Maybe it made the sex better, or maybe she couldn’t stand him while she was sober. He was an anti-vax Trump supporter who was slightly racist, despite being black and having parents from the DR. But she couldn’t quit him; he was 6’1 and made of pure muscle. Even the new gun safe in his bedroom didn’t stop her. He finished his whiskey before leaning over and kissing her sloppily, much more drunk than she was. She still had to drive home in an hour.
Soon, their activities moved to the bedroom, although tonight things were moving slower. He never dove into sex with her, they always talked, but tonight they had talked and drank for a long time, and she was anxious about her dad calling. Her head hung over the side of the bed as he moved on top of her, his muscular body glistening with sweat. She closed her eyes, hoping he wouldn’t want to do anal. She was too drunk and she wanted to go home. With her eyes closed, she could pretend he was someone else; someone who called her “beautiful” or “pretty,” instead of “fucking sexy.” Rich always took forever to finish, so these drunken fantasies would have to soothe her.
Conversion Exercise 1:
A bubble surrounded her. This bubble was special. The bubble that only let certain people in, people whom it trusted. It’s almost like this bubble had a mind separate from the one it surrounded. “Please let them in,” she said desperately. “It’s getting lonely in here.” The bubble didn’t budge. She tried walking up to other people, hoping for the bubble to let them into her space. But nothing happened. Walls were caving in on her. Or should I say the bubble was caving in on her? She placed her hands against the boundary and pushed. She pushed so hard that the boundary expanded. She kept pushing further and further, and finally, the bubble popped. She sighed a huge relief and ran to all the other people whom she tried to let into her bubble. Eventually, she became close with those other people. ‘I don’t need the bubble anymore’ she thought. But little did she know, that she was gonna be wrong. She now sits alone, in a corner of a room. She doesn’t talk to anyone anymore. And she realizes why she needed the bubble.
Conversion exercise 2:
She runs around in the kitchen. She runs so much that she looks like the hare speeding in the race of the tortoise and the hare. She runs to the fridge and pulls out two big tomatoes. She slices and slices quickly but carefully. She looks for the meat. it’s not on the counter. “Honey!” she shouts, “You were supposed to take the salmon out of the out!” She sighs and opens the freezer. Her fingers hover over the drawer and she grasps it. She pulls the drawer out. Inside the drawer is a plastic package. This plastic package is cold with little icicles covering it. She picks it up and places it on the counter. She grabs another knife and slices through the package. There’s the salmon. Frozen, bright pink, and very very cold. She places it in a dish and opens the microwave. And hits the defrost button. Now she has to wait and wait. She doesn’t like standing there like a lump. She now feels like the tortoise.
Exercise 1-
She slowly lifts the warmed glass to her lips, savoring every moment. The steamed blend of cinnamon and chai leaves a heat in her body. Within a single sip, she remembers all the chais she has drunk to distract herself from the breakup. With leaves blowing in her hair, she strides through the street. The store standing in front of her calls to her. She places her hand on the door, feeling the weight, and pulls. The anxiety hits her as she walks the doorway. She wonders where she should even begin as she looks out at a crowd of people and lines of shelves, slowly being stripped of their items.
Exercise 2- After opening the cabinet, she pulls out a shiny, golden trophy of some kind. It is so bright she can almost see her reflection in it, like it has been untouched for years. “Come over here!” She exclaims as her friends rush over to see what she has found. One by one, they each take turns holding the medal and making speeches. They list the usual; who they’d like to thank, who they would not like to thank, and anything else that comes to mind. They all get their picture taken with the award, each thinking to themselves how they can achieve it. A different friend places the trophy back into the cabinet and they run into the kitchen, onto the next thing, yet the trophy never leaves their minds.
Exercise 1:
The clock strikes midnight but the bells haven’t chimed yet. She knows they have a delay of a few minutes. They never move though, they haven’t in a very long time but every night the melodic sounds of the bells reverberate through the campus. Maybe they live in a different dimension than the bells. Perhaps the bells are a collective memory from a time when life was less silent. Sometimes she dreams about leaving the library and passing the chapel when the bells chime. She’d see a person standing up there in the tower working the mechanics of the bells like a ghost. But that’s just what it is, a dream. A disorienting fog slowly travels over the green patches leading up to the library as she makes her way back to her room. The world resembles a Poe story come to live. Her head starts to spin like a carousel and it makes her feel like she is waltzing over campus to a song that no one seems to hear but her. The street lights barely illuminate the concrete path in front of her. The bells chime and she reminisces about a time when sounds not only existed internally. She bells don’t move but she still hears the bells’ echo like it’s whispering directly into her ear. The deafening silence is infinite.
Exercise 2:
It was dark, so dark that she could barely make out the person in front of her. The smoke made her eyes water and not for the first time did she wonder how she’s gotten herself into this situation. She should have turned around the second she stood in that dirty back alley knocking on a metal door. The door opened immediately and she was greeted by someone who she assumed was a bouncer but when she showed him her ID, he just laughed and closed the heavy door behind her. For the last five minutes, she’s been stalking through a room that she assumed to be an empty dancefloor. They come to a halt in front of another door and she can see light shining through the gaps. Deep male voices reverberate through the thin wood. This is out of her comfort zone and she wishes to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but she is also existed for the unknown possibilities that this world offers.
Exercise #1
You Can Never Die
In a serene village embraced by rolling hills, Nia found solace in poetry and art from a tender age. Her heart resonated with the rhythmic verses and vibrant canvases.As she matured, Nia’s passion for poetry deepened. She immersed herself in the verses of renowned poets, finding solace in their words. Poetry wasn’t just an art form for Nia; it was a doorway to boundless imagination and emotion.
Nia dreamt of a life painted with the colors of art. She imagined wandering through sunlit meadows, penning verses inspired by nature’s beauty. She longed for a community of kindred spirits, where creativity sparked like wildfire.
Amidst her love for poetry, Nia’s heart was captivated by her first love. He was a boy with eyes like the ocean and a smile that warmed her soul. Through her verses, Nia idealized him, seeing in him the embodiment of goodness and beauty.
Their love burned brightly, fueled by stolen glances and whispered confessions. He was Nia’s muse, her inspiration.
But as time passed, their love faltered, like petals falling from a wilting flower.
He was a pain-giving thorn a flower-lover like her never deserved. But she never acknowledged the pain he gave her. She idealised him to her core.
Nia held onto memories, cherishing each moment as if it were a precious gem.
In the years that followed, Nia continued to write, her words infused with the essence of her first love. She couldn’t let him go, for in her eyes, he would forever embody love and beauty.
Guided by the hues of art and the melodies of poetry, Nia found beauty in every corner of life. Though her first love faded, his essence remained in the verses she penned, forever her muse, forever her inspiration.
As they say, “If an artists falls in love with you, you can never die ! Nothing can separate you from them, not even death”
Exercise #2
The Light Within Darkness
In the softly lit hospital room, the air was charged with anticipation as Mark and Emily cradled their newborn daughter in their arms. Their hearts overflowed with a kaleidoscope of emotions – joy, love, and boundless hope for the future. Their daughter, wrapped snugly in a pink blanket, lay nestled against Emily’s chest, her delicate features bathed in the warm glow of the room.
Mark’s gaze lingered on his daughter’s face, marveling at her perfect little nose and the way her tiny fingers curled around his own. He felt a surge of pride and protectiveness wash over him as he held her close, knowing that he would do anything to keep her safe and happy.
Emily’s eyes brimmed with tears of sheer happiness as she looked down at her daughter, her heart overflowing with love. She whispered words of endearment, promising to always be there for her, to guide her through life’s ups and downs.
But amidst the euphoria, there lingered a faint shadow of uncertainty – a niggling doubt that refused to be ignored. As the minutes stretched into hours, Mark and Emily waited anxiously for the doctor to return with the results of their daughter’s tests.
When the door finally swung open, the doctor’s somber expression spoke volumes. Mark’s heart sank as the words tumbled out – their daughter was blind. Emily felt as if the ground had been ripped out from under her, her world crumbling around her as she struggled to comprehend the news.
In that moment, grief washed over them like a tidal wave, threatening to drown out the joy they had felt just moments before. How could this be happening? How could their daughter be robbed of the gift of sight, condemned to a world of darkness?
As they held their daughter close, tears streaming down their cheeks, Mark and Emily vowed to be her guiding light – to show her that despite the darkness that surrounded her, there was still beauty to be found in the world. And as they gazed into her unseeing eyes, they knew that she would always be their little miracle, their beacon of hope in a world fraught with uncertainty.
exercise #1: Queen of Hearts (Revisited)
Margot said she found the box in a thrift store. That means it’s something of a nomad—shifting from owner to owner, store to store, belonging and then not. It’s motherless but a mother itself: a tiny, clay queen of hearts loose in its womb. If you shake it hard enough you can almost taste the emptiness of where a wedding ring used to be. Maybe a ruby. If you open it, it can speak.
Tony, it says, grew up in Brooklyn and started smoking when he was thirteen. He was handsome—the type of man you stare after on the street. A weekend in late July in his late twenties, he took a flight out of JFK to Las Vegas, a few hundred dollars in his pocket that he got from his most recent job that were itching to be spent. Dirty money isn’t dirty if you gamble it all away.
I see him pass by the windowsill that I sit in; newly made and shiny. There’s still something childlike about him—eager, wide-eyed, in need of a haircut. I want to smile. He’s headed to the casino to do lines with the other guys in the bathroom and make them lose games of blackjack by whispering fake promises in their ears. By six o’clock he’s lost a hundred dollars on one slot machine but won it back twofold on another. By eight, he’s pulled into a poker game and the dealer meets his eyes.
It’s then, I think, that Tony starts to think about buying the ring that he’d eventually stash inside me. He’s a romantic really, my Tony. You wouldn’t know that just from looking at him.
It’s then he starts playing two games at once: one with cards, and one with glances. A two-player game. The dealer has dark eyes and darker hair and Tony loses two rounds of poker just thinking about how warm that face might be between his fingertips. By nine o’clock a waitress in a plaid dress brings them all drinks, and Tony knocks his back, feeling his face loosen and a smile fall into place. By ten o’clock he’s got the dealer pinned to a brick wall outside the casino, and the night air is dusty, smelling like smoke and four-letter words.
He sees me in the very same windowsill early the next morning. Walks in and cups me in his hand, then carries me around in his pocket for months before I’m put to good use. A ring is taken out of me and put on a finger, and it’s then I know I have been a good mother.
This was all in the 1920s. Before the great depression and before Tony’s dealer found him slumped on the bathroom floor with red eyes and limp wrists. Before I was put back on a shelf, to be taken home by a little girl who crafts my child—a tiny, clay queen of hearts—to put inside my womb.
This isn’t the only story I have to tell. It’s just my favorite.
exercise #2: Blue Like Heaven
There’s an outbreak of pink-eye at the elementary school. Theresa hopes her daughter won’t catch it, but in the back of the auditorium, her daughter is pressing her eye, brown and gelatinous, to her best friend’s. Everyone else has pink-eye and they want it, too. They are little girls and they hate being left out.
In the car, Theresa asks her daughter how her day was, and she replies from the backseat that it was good; she got pink-eye. Theresa makes a U-turn for the Oakland hospital.
They give her eye drops. The child starts crying because she’s scared of putting something foreign in her eye. Theresa says that pink-eye is already something foreign.
They pull over by the Wendy’s on Broadway. “It’ll be fine.” Theresa says. “It doesn’t hurt.” She has to plead with her daughter for the better part of half an hour before the eight-year-old lets her head be tipped back, clear liquid dripping out of the bottle like poison coating her retinas.
When the child opens her eyes, the world is blue like heaven.