THIS IS US X THE NOTEBOOK
When Maya finds a memoir written by her ailing mother, she is catapulted into an evocative journey into her family’s past where she must determine where hallucination ends, and truth begins.
#questpit
#Q
#A
#WF
#MSWL
#writingcommunity
#amquerying
Just typed “The End”on the 1st draft of my 1st novel!
3 years
93k words
Countless hours, doubts & small victories
93k pieces of me
But the best isn’t the book. It’s the self-discovery, the dear friends I’ve met,the possibilities. Keep going, folks!
#writingcommunity
#amwriting
I was 7 when I knew the bogeyman was real. He didn’t hide under my bed. He walked in plain sight, had a key to the door. I stand on your grave,
#defy
your ghost to rise & look me in the eye. Instead you sleep. “Loving Dad” etches your stone. One more secret between us.
#vss365
4.5 years later, I FINISHED MY BOOK!
Relationships aside, I’ve never worked harder on anything in my life–never labored more, fussed more, cared more. This book stoked my love of writing, showed me I can do it, & made me feel worthy to call myself a writer.
#writingcommunity
One day, I got in the car & drove
#east
. Drove days, nights with nothing but a backpack & $60. I wasn’t driving away from anything, not even toward something. I was simply living, sipping nectar from moments, taking the shape of wind—free & shadowless.
#vss365
#WritingCommunity
6 years, 7 drafts. 7 beta readers.
More lost sleep hours than I can count.
But! I have sent my latest version off to my editor & I can say I’m proud of this manuscript & how far it’s come.
More than that, I’m proud I’ve never given up. I wrote a book, folks.
#WritingCommunity
She sat at the shoreline. She’d cried for so long, she couldn’t tell where her tears ended & sea began. Death took pity, guiding her to a world spun in pastels. It was perfect until she saw the little girl with the face like hers calling from the wrong side of
#infinity
.
#vss365
I told mama, crying, “I’m not like everyone else. Everyone connects and crisscrosses all day, but me, I’m a
#parallel
line. Never intersecting.
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” Mama said. “Even parallel lines can snuggle up real close, whisper a “I love you.”
#vss365
#amwriting
I asked mama if her glass was half full or empty. “Ain’t no matter,” she said. “One day you just gonna spill it anyways—one whoppin’
#liquid
mess!”
I about cried thinkin’ of mama so hopeless. Til she said, “Sugar, don’t you know hope’s measured in breaths?”
#vss365
My heel’s
#stuck
. The train screeches, lights blind. I scream, but it passes thru me. Then I remember–the accident happened years ago. I wonder why I keep coming back to these tracks. Then I see you, my old shirt pressed to your lips.And I know we’ll both keep coming back.
#vss365
I write your name in ink on my heart, letters dripping with permanence. Charmed, I watch you write my name in the sand. You kiss me so I won’t see the Pacific erase me in one swell. That was our love–a castle built on the sand,
#drift
-ing back to sea.
#vss365
Dad was a
#comic
, chasing cheers that never came. He didn’t give up though, wasn’t in his DNA. Only thing he loved more that the sound of laughter was the sound of sea. I scatter his ashes, watch them join the briny mist. Waves lap on the shore, a chorus of applause.
#vss365
At the end of my life, I stack my mistakes in a pile. It twists & snakes thru the clouds. I feel lost, try to find myself in this
#hive
of broken seasons. Empty handed, I climb, stand on the summit. Smiling, I watch the smoky veil of dusk rise, write my name in shards.
#vss365
Plain girl, had a pocketful of change–gave a coin to every open palm, ‘til all she had is a pocketful of empty. She never wept dimes lost, only the palms she couldn’t fill. Her heart is a diamond, spinning on its back. No one sees. It’s tucked inside her coat of
#plain
.
#vss365
I meet you in my dreams. We hold hands, fly on wings of nightfall, tiptoe on stars so the world can’t touch us.
#Wink
-ing, you ask if I believe in miracles. I don’t until you wake alongside me, stars falling from your hair, drops of moonlight on your lips.
#vss365
#poetry
I pluck a pen from my heart, weave words in the
#space
between stars. Pulled from my chest, they take the shape of my ghosts. I ink them across the heavens, afraid to gaze their blackness. I open my eyes, see only star–
#dust
and constellations dancing with the moon.
#vss365
There was a time
When dreams were
#bundle
-s of pearls
Awash on silken sands
But chards of self
Only stay unbroken for so long
Before giving their last glow under the sun
They break beneath the feet of life
Turning to dust
Gone, but for a wayward glint on the wind
#vss365
#poem
I breathe
#nightmares
into dreams. Loved by
#nobody
, feared by all. Each morning, I sit among willows, weeping the dreams I turned dark, the peace I tore from sleeping hearts. I find solace in sun drops upon eyelids and first breaths of beautiful reality.
#vss365
You said I had wings. You were my parachute, so I never needed them. Until I hike to the crest of our mountain, your ashes in hand. I slip, freefall toward the
#sea
. I want to give up, plunge to the deep. Your ashes become my murmuration, and I rise on wings of us.
#vss365
I hold a piece of coal. It flames in my hand. I think of you, the wounds you inflicted burrowing deep. I long to give you the ember blazing in my grasp. It belongs to you, not me. But you’re long gone, untouched, and my flesh is
#furrow
-ed and burned.
#vss365
Mama said if she ever came back, it’d be as a firefly. She always kept her word, so I spent summer watching
#fireflies
dance like fallen stars. I got real anxious wondering which glittery dot was Mama. Then I realized, it’d take every dot in the sky to equal Mama’s love.
#vss365
Find me among rain that falls
And is remembered upon breaths and cheeks
Find me in
#shiver
-s cast upon your skin
In moon rays touching your night
Darling, minutes pass in years
And we are both
Lost in seas of silver stars, longing for life
#vss365
#poem
#poetry
Mom used to say u can tell a lot about a person by their
#sock
-s. Matching, holey, fun–she was always staring at everyone’s ankles. But Mom didn’t wear any. Maybe that’s why I heard her crying every night. I saved my allowance, bought her the brightest pair you ever saw.
#vss365
She remembered his footsteps as he left, the echo love leaves behind. He promised he’d return & from the look in his eyes she’d believed it. But the post brought no letters; the phone, no calls. She traced the curve of her round belly–the last hint he’d
#exist
-ed at all.
#vss365
Grandad wanted to move
#west
. If the sun can lay its head down out there everyday, so can I, he’d say. I suppose he was looking for a new frontier, where dreams hadn’t lived long enough to die. He never did make it. When I see the sun set, I whisper a soft “goodnight.”
#vss365
She’s waiting for you
Milky Way eyes
Riding in like a shooting star
Picking up dreams
Fallen from pockets of ripped heart
Scattering them
Under light of
#blood
red moon
Do you see her?
Daring you to look up
And remember
Stars are just lost dreams
Staring back at you
#vss365
Will my tears carry me
To the river of second chances
Where time flows backward
To the shore of Then
Where the future was a tepid sea
Ripe for sailing
Will they forge a heart patched with hope?
I have no use for Now
It is but a faded
#disguise
Carry me, tears, to Then
#vss365
I walked outside of town to see if I could still see the stars without you sitting beside me. I looked up, and there they were, twinkling from their
#nest
of eternity. I knew then that love is the ultimate finder—it’s only hearts that lose their way.
#vss365
#writingcommunity
It has been an absolute thrill serving as your host these two weeks. I’m constantly enriched by the talent & creativity of the vss365 community. Thank you for sharing your beautiful souls & words with me! Wishing you all a thrilling and Happy Halloween!
#vss365
#prompt
#thrill
I thought my
#house
was a palace until Billy Smith called it a trash heap; thought our car was a Benz until Betsy Fry said she’d rather ride in a hearse. I figured out love could slingshot shame to the heavens when Ma’s embrace silenced them all, even the creaky steps.
#vss365
When we were little, I wanted to be the older one. Boys, driving—you did it first. When we grew up, and youth was a shiny prize, you wanted to be the younger one. Candles burn on my cake. For the 1st time, I’m older than you. I smile, imagine you
#laughing
in the stars.
#vss365
I can think of a million reasons not to hold your hand. Years turned to ages, love to
#lore
. Time snapped her finger, & the lines of your face, once mapped on my palm, withered. Now you return–I reach for the
#door
. But this night is cold & my hand is in the shape of you.
#vss365
I was
#afraid
of you. They said to place my fear in a balloon & send it up to the sky. It bursts, pieces fall at my feet. Still scared, I bury the shreds in the ground. A tree grows, crooked & gnarled but crowned in lilac blooms. I pluck a flower, tuck it behind my ear.
#vss365
The flower swayed under the sun, waiting to
#become
. She grew lighter, imagining petals as full as the gibbous moon, silken as spring’s morning fingers. As she waited, day bled into night. Soon, she withered…floating like feathers to a graveyard of longing petals.
#vss365
#poem
She calls me “Mom,” humming as she tucks me in. Her presence soothes like the first glimpse of green after winter lifts her bleak veil.
My mind is locked from the inside out, shadows
#manipulate
the dance of memory. But, oh, her voice.
#vss365
#SatSplat
#WritingCommunity
Mom says there’s nothing worse than being
#lazy
. She glares at the homeless man on Broad St., forbidding me to look at him. I look. His eyes are sad. He holds a picture of a girl who looks my age. Mom pulls my arm, but I sneak my allowance in his cup.
#vss365
I hold on for moments of joy
Washing in like broken ice
On warming tides
I skip from one to the next
But the sea between is too vast
There are no auroras here
No seaside Ferris wheels
Only bare night & eclipsed moons
Where
#poetic
stars have gone to weep
#vss365
#poem
#poetry
The sky rained
#acid
for 30 days. The colors of our canvas world smudged and streaked. We mourned our lost palette, our fallen hues. We retreated into ourselves, sheltering in rainbows made from memory. We spent our days chasing color, never daring to find beauty in gray.
#vss365
Lay me in whispers, soft & rustling
Until my soul becomes a secret
Dancing like a poet’s pen under light
Shepherd me through ageless night
To glades where wildflowers bloom
Wrap me in birdsong until I am a note, a murmur of a lullaby
Let me sleep among spruce &
#lichen
, until
#Midnight
peers thru starless sky
Finds me glancing you
Your photo upon my chest
It’s light
Unlike the emptiness
Of our half-filled bed
Of memories petaling my heart
Your ghost is all that remains
But ghosts are better than dreams
I fall asleep
In the crook of your shadow
#vss365
When we were little, I wanted to be the older one. Boys, driving, skipping school. You did it 1st. The tables turned when we were older & youth was a shiny prize. Candles burn on my cake–for the first
#time
I’m older than you. I smile, imagine you laughing in the stars.
#vss365
Night fades, not fearing the dawn. Leaves fall, not mourning the branch. Yet I hold your hand, a
#war
of dying cells within. I hope my memory will be carried on strands of love. I’ll drift from person to person, petal to petal, star to star, living because I loved.
#vss365
She longed for
#quiet
, until it came. It squeezed in thru the window by her bed, floated on fragments of night before landing on her heart. In the silence she heard a dream, then another. Dreams she’d lost to the noise of now, clamoring for freedom on wings of heartbeats.
#vss365
All the teachers called on me, but I never answered. I’d throw things, storm out, anything not to talk. “She’s so
#oppositional
,” they’d say. Until Ms. Smith. “Did you know King George VI stuttered?” she asked. I don’t know how she knew, but I found my voice that day.
#vss365
They said I was the best cook in town–only ingredient I never lacked was love. When the owner died, she left me a note: “I thought I owned the
#cafe
. All I owned were tables & chairs. If we keep what’s ours in our heart, this place is yours.” Under the note was the deed.
#vss365
I thought our dreams were made of steel
Impenetrable to howling winds
Now I see they’re made of clay
Shaped over seasons gone and yet to be
We aren’t unbreakable
But aren’t we art?
Born in earth, sculpted in flame
And water enough to swim to the stars
#vss365
#prompt
#flame
Daddy’s a high roller, always saying “no risk, no
#reward
.” I giggle & give him a $5 from my piggy bank. He squeezes me & tells me he’s gonna bet it all on lucky 7. We’re still waiting for Daddy to come back. I count the candles on my cake before blowing them out–Lucky 7.
#vss365
These words are my piece of forever. Read them, will you? When my hand is no longer yours to hold and my heart is but a fleck on yesterday. For my soul cannot be touched, but it can be seen at the place where your eyes and my pen meet.
#vss365
#prompt
#hand
📷 Pixabay
Sit with me
For day has coaxed night to spin endings that come too soon
You are my new horizon, and I yours
When you walk, let it be toward me
And when I peer from this placeless
#void
, let it be to glimpse your light
We are inseparable, even though I walk to eternity
#vss365
I visit my old street, stand in its smallness. I see little me on misty horizon, dusty feet prancing on stone & grass. I stand here, old woman, life tucked in my
#pocket
-s. They clink with sunsets seen & missed; chances taken & others left in the foil of their promise.
#vss365
I was afraid of you. They said to put my fear in a balloon and send it to the sky. It bursts, pieces fall at my feet. Still scared, I bury the shreds. A tree grows, crooked and gnarled but crowned in lilac blooms. I pluck a flower, tuck it behind my ear.
#vss365
#prompt
#bloom
Remember, Dad? How we’d
#search
the sky for Pegasus? I always found it until the night your heart stopped. I looked up & saw only black as if it flew away, taking the stars with it. I’ve seen it every night since you passed. Its wings glisten & I fly in your constellation.
#vss365
My life plays by the rules. No magic, no secrets hidden in old chests. Until I find a pic of her in Ma’s attic: the sister I wanted & never knew I had. Ma used to say truth is the one thing not bound by
#gravity
. It always rises. You just gotta be ready to rise with it.
#vss365
If you asked me to write a love poem
I’d ponder your eyes
Beg my muse
To cast flowers
Over pen & page
That I might sketch
Your
#inscape
Its palette of hues
I stare at linen page
Choke on its emptiness
It’s not that I never
Wrote you a love poem
It’s that you never asked
#vss365
Ma & Pa used to
#quibble
over the smallest things. But at the end of the day, they’d snuggle close, watch the sun play hide & seek with the hills before night had the final word. In the quiet, I heard their love. Didn’t it sing with the crickets, float with the fireflies?
#vss365
I pick up a letter from you
Knowing I shouldn’t
For some memories
Are too real
Their edges not
Yet smoothed
By time’s forgiving
Haze
I pick up a letter from you
Its page, your face
Its ink, your voice
I shouldn’t, but I reach
To find only
#shadows
And this letter from you
#vss365
Some days,
I want to hold life to my chest
Wander in aimless beauty
Other days, I want to slip into silence
Sleep in soft darkness
But your lantern eyes
They corral my shadows
Building stairways of light
Upon restless breaths
#vss365
#prompt
#lantern
📷 Pixabay
I search for you on sun-soaked morns
Look for you on shells of stars, flickering in your past light
I try to steal a particle for myself but you slip under
#ash
-es of then
I cannot hold you, for hands of yesterday and today can never meet
#vss365
#WritingCommunity
#poem
It didn’t happen overnight.
#Gloom
never does. It crept in like a thief, stealing pieces until I became unrecognizable. I haven’t left my home in 537 days. I take my daughter’s hand, step outside. My breath joins w/ the outside air, as if the world is welcoming me home.
#vss365
Only one night to make amends—24 hours to erase 24 years. The first light of sun warms my cheek like a campfire where stories are rewritten, and the smoke of the past charms the night. It’s time to write a new
#screenplay
, daylight my page, minutes my ink.
#vss365
📷 Pixabay
Happiness–I knew her once
She lay on my shoulder
Whispered promises
She borrowed drops of heaven
Shaped them into a smile
In the likeness of me
I
#consult
the sky
For her remnants
Graze my shoulder
For traces of warmth
I shudder in cold
Longing–for a friend I once knew
#vss365
The world was obsessed with measurements. We chose a different path. We listened to nature, read each other’s eyes, used the stars to find our
#north
. Senses soaring, we could tell the difference between anger & hurt; lust & love with a mere glance, a touch of the hand.
#vss365
Pinocchio’s nose grew when he lied. Your face turned
#pale
, as if the good Lord was gonna come down and take you straight to Judgment. I thought it was funny. Until I asked you if you loved me & your face turned as white as
#ghosts
caressing the moon.
#vss365
#WritingCommunity
I am stardust, floating in cold space, waiting to be more
Saturn, made of ice & shattered moons
You look at me thru Hubble eyes
See rings & light, crystal ribbons in the sky
Cosmic
#strangers
collide
You, a stargazer in search of a star
Me, a universe in search of a sun
#vss365
I can’t love a ghost
But what if the ghost is me?
Who am I?
If not a rainbow folding to the rain
A ray of sun sunken to a glimmer
I can’t love a ghost
For they are
#example
-s of what was
So I float on starlit memories
Watch them fall, 1 by 1
To a grave that sings my name
#vss365
She looks at me, eyes
#moonstruck
from the quay upon craggy shore
I pray I’ll never forget those shore-born eyes that held me for many a night & morrow
But the ocean turns hours to years & boy to man, and my Bonnie is but a memory
For land and sea, they meet but once
#vss365
My chest beats empty notes
Listening
For the symphony of you
Casting wishes in
#twilight
For your color to return
Your moonstruck melody
I move in your memory
Dance in your light
‘Til even your memory scatters
And I’m lost in primrose past
Listening
For the tune of us
#vss365
I put a
#dollar
in the homeless man’s cup. We share a glance, our eyes smile. Then, he rises–face unlined, clothes new. I gasp.
“You broke the spell. 50 yrs I waited for someone to see me.” He walks off, stops in front of a homeless boy, looks him the eye. Boy rises.
#vss365
Everything sturdy erodes in time—the
#grain
stringing our hearts together; the tree we etched our initials upon. The wind holds no memory, the earth no footprints. Look only to the stars, which hold a lingering light of us.
#vss365
#writingcommunity
#poetry
#poem
Serendipity tapped my window
Gliding, lithe & airy
I trailed behind
Over rooftops & moon-soaked timbers
Thru the night we chased
Til dawn’s eyelids raised
And I fell like a sack of moon rocks on my bed
Giggling, Serendipity
#vanished
I smiled, knowing she’s out there
Ready to
Some say night is the great obscurer, keeper of shadows. Us, we yearn for the sunless sky when the moon’s
#spotlight
rises & she opens her computer. With each stroke, she pens our existence, our world bordered by ink and dreams. The writer’s day ends, our story begins.
#vss365
Never thought I’d find love at group therapy, but I saw this pair of eyes–dark like they’d seen their share of night. Critical when pointed inward, kind when pointed out. They say love is a choice. I fell in love with a pair of eyes. I watch them
#sparkle
in the mirror.
#vss365
My heel’s stuck. The train screeches, passing through me. Then I remember the accident. I wonder why I keep coming back to these tracks. Then I see you sitting there, my favorite shirt pressed to your lips. And I know we’ll both keep coming back.
#vss365
#prompt
#see
📷Pixabay
Some people’s memories are stones, sinking depths to become lost pebbles of the sea. Some memories
#behave
like hummingbirds, fluttering color on mid-sky canvas. Mine are fireflies, just enough light to fashion stars from tears.
#vss365
#writingcommunity
#amwriting
#slapdashsat
Fate brought us to this place of shuttered glass
I search for slivers of sky
From which to pluck a breath
Or glimpse a summer bloom
But there’s only memories here
And they can’t save us
For they bloom under past suns
So I sit in shadows—alone
Your flower tucked in my palm
#vss365
When she was little, the house echoed w/ her giggles, screeches & endless
#barrage
of “Mommy!” How I longed for needle in the haystack moments of quiet. I stand in the driveway, watch her car pull out on its way to new roads.Silence slams my heart. All I want is her noise.
#vss365
Sis used to say “there ain’t no
#risk
in kindness.” She was always smilin’, helpin’ everyone. When she got sick, the whole town showed up, prayin’ & fightin’ alongside her. She said she couldn’t wait to pay it forward. I told Sis she already had–now it was comin’ back.
#vss365
Waves are just slivers of sea
Seeking the touch of shore
#Rejected
, they retreat to the longing deep
Yet, within a breath, they return
Creating magic in the sound of resolve, the salt of tears
The necklace of foam & broken shell they leave behind
#vss365
#writingcommunity
#poem
I pluck a pen from my heart, weave words between stars. Pulled from my chest, they take the shape of my ghosts. I ink them across the heavens, afraid to gaze their blackness. I open my eyes, see only stardust and constellations dancing with the moon.
#vss365
#prompt
#shape
Ma never knew directions. North,
#south
, east, west were just words people said ‘cause they scared a gettin’ lost, she’d say. Then she’d look at me, eyes shining like Jupiter’s moons. “Well, I ain’t scared a that. You know why? ‘Cause I could find your hand in the dark.”
#vss365
Ma said a
#tranquil
heart’s hard to find. I looked up among those glittery dots, checked the garden where those sunflowers tickle my cheeks. Then Ma looked at me, eyes twinkling more than Jupiter’s moons. I didn’t know if hers was a tranquil heart, but I knew it was mine.
#vss365
The grain flickers in my hand. It’s smaller than a last dream should be. I blow it into the star-flecked night, a kiss sent to the heavens. I gaze the glittering canvas, then I see…stars are just lost dreams staring back at me.
#vss365
#prompt
#last
📷 Pixabay
Oh, wandering wind
I long for your freedom
To scatter to & fro
To whisper in valleys
And soar on mountain’s edge
But are there no arms that can hold you?
No kindreds to
#shepherd
you home?
Oh, aching wind
You brush untold hands
But hold none
#vss365
#poem
#poetry
📷 Pixabay
Love is more
I feel less than
Come, Love
Tiptoe with me
On fallen stars
Whisper breaths
In half-moon night
Knit love
On time’s open palm
There are no
#accident
-s
Only promises in flight
Only wishes in bottles
Washing on our shore
Together, Love
We are greater than
#vss365
With each crack of thunder, she finds a drop hidden among stars. Inside, a seed to stories not yet told. Every night, she plucks drops from the sky, her
#story
nearly written. On the final night, a crack, then a drop. She leaves it in the sky—the end is hers to write.
#vss365
I fold my legs like sullen roots
Sit under the falling grace of your wisps
As I spill to earth with you
You show me the beauty in weeping with the wind
#vss365
#prompt
#beauty
📷 Pixabay
I trace my finger over your name, a Braille
#tattoo
on my arm. I fill in your features until I see you in my mind, my son. A face I’ve touched a million times, but never laid eyes upon. Yet each curve of your face is mapped on my heart. A mother sees w/ the light of love.
#vss365
Mama was my river, always moving me forward. After she passed, my dreams dried on her bank. Until I remembered her words, “Memories are some funny business ‘specially them bad ones. But you know what keeps me awake? Them memories I ain’t never made.”
#vss365
#prompt
#forward
Every morning, she wakes up whole. But as minutes give way to hours, fractions of her fall away. By nightfall, she’s a perimeter, a shell in search of an essence. She lies at the shoreline, a shadow among
#heron
-s, letting the waves take her.
#vss365
#writingcommunity
#amwriting
They told us our only hope was
#quarantine
. Space was limited, so lotteries were held. Those left behind gathered around fires. We took turns, young and old, telling stories into the painted dawn. When it all went dark, I had the feeling another story would soon begin.
#vss365
Every night, we’d walk by the fountain. You’d ask what I wished for, but I’d never tell. The water cascades, and I clench my empty hand. “I wished for one more walk with you.” A breeze brushes my cheek, circles me like an embrace. Some magic never dies. The magic of us.
#SatSplat
Darling, we were made for glancing up
For sculpting castles from fallen stars
My water lily, opening your bloom at dusk
So I can find you in this
#fluid
swirl of night
And these shadows, dear, look like stardust next to you
#vss365
#writingcommunity
#poem
#poetry
📷 Pixabay
The night sky is a map of our love–each star, a word spoken; the dark void in between, all the words unspoken. I used to look up, see glitter and light. Since you passed, I glance the sky, see only a
#wall
of black. All I want is time for more stars.
#vss365
#WritingCommunity
#History
is filled with forgotten birthdays–good people, deserving people. Yet, I remember yours. You, who laid burnt spring at my feet, turned memories to mausoleums. I have no flowers to lay in your name–just this crumbling tomb where the ghost of a little girl sings.
#vss365
I was 16 when I changed my name to Freedom. My friends said I was only out for attention. I can’t kick the dust of this town, say
#farewell
to empty cabinets or shouts that echo into the morning. I heard someone say, if you can name it, you can be it. Call me, Freedom.
#vss365