Author: VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

If I Could Only Breathe

So much I want to say,
yet the oppression of opposition
stomps heavily on my airways
cutting off the flow

Daughter of a trans father
mother contemplating MAiD –
embroiled in controversy,
I see only injustice

Cannot fathom the hatred
the railing against books
and glamour, and science,
misappropriation of christianity

How am I supposed to grieve;
take up arms for those I love,
when I am silenced before I speak
judgments cast without a thought?

If I could have a word,
if anyone would listen
I would share, perhaps insight
into the lives of secrets held

Describe how hearts wilt
beneath cruelty of suppression
how torn apart we become
ignorance voiding authenticity

I would tell you of the horrors
that dwelt within our homes
the fear of discovery, of rejection
how ugly it all felt….until

Education offered explanation
and in that opening
we saw potential to climb out
from our shadowy existence

embrace a life in which our love
is neither tainted nor deviant
and tell me please, as I try to listen
how such hopefulness is sin, after all.


(Image my own)


Time for Reflection and Courage

Time stands still; we wait
the noise of speculation stark contrast
to the reality that confronts us

Where do we go from here
and what authority to trust
and in this imposed solitude

can we find the strength
of reflection, the courage
to follow an inner lead?

(Time for Reflection and Courage first appeared on One Woman’s Quest, April 2020. Image my own)

Dear Sylvia Plath (Response to ‘Apprehensions’)

Please let me preface with a confession –
I am not familiar with your work.
It is not oversight on my part, rather
a deliberate avoidance – you see,
I too have faced the brand of madness
that drove you to your death, have
feared that any intimacy we might share
would stir my own apprehensions.

Indeed, I understand all too well
the presence of walls,
have believed in the power of the sky,
the promise of green, found faith in angels –
nature my solace – realized too young
that the sun’s brilliance, that my brilliance
cannot be sustained by the innocence of white –
bleeds at the fate of indifferent stars.

I understand how gray seeps in,
tears away at the illusions,
entraps us –
how the past stalks, spirals,
threatens to suck us in, and how,
having lost my own connection to birds and trees,
wonderment sours.

It is the fate of women
born into patriarchal times,
that the blood of our menses
should colour our fists –
our fury as potent as a paper bag –
how can we not feel terror
when we worship a God
whose religion disparages our gender?

I have faced the inevitability of black –
what once brought solace having lost
its definition, unidentifiable –
have faced mortality, the cold blank
stares of death still haunting –
I am the one who passed you by –
afraid to linger too long in your words,
have woefully overlooked
the merit of a sympathetic read.

(This poem was first written in April of 2018. The prompt was to write a response to a poem by Sylvia Plath. It’s an interesting exercise. Image my own. )

Apprehensions by Sylvia Plath

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself-
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There are no trees or birds in this world,
There is only sourness.

This red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two grey, papery bags-
This is what i am made of, this, and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pietas.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immorality among these!
Cold blanks approach us: 
They move in a hurry.