A single, blow-up bed
claims my stake
on this house
mostly empty –
dust remnants
of former occupants
rise at my passage –
I chase them
Renovation
will precede
settling in
yet, I will not leave
wrapping myself
in these walls
waiting for
the revelation
that this is home.
(Linked to V.J.’s weekly challenge: home.)
Outside, clouds hover,
heavy, threatening.
Inside, men haul –
china cabinet,
weathered couch –
accumulation
marking years,
exiting under duress
echoes fill in the spaces
scent of soured sweat lingers
kitchen counters
glare, empty
layers of our lives
stripped away
our vacated shell,
an emotional tug
Is it fear? Â Sorrow?
What was it all about anyway?
closing the door behind us
locking memories in the past
we load our small boxes
essentials for a simpler life –
a home on wheels life
point our nose forward
and drive away
as the sun breaks through.
(A year ago, we sold our bricks and sticks house, along with its contents and moved into a motor home. Â Now we are reversing the process – accumulating and setting up house again. Â Apparently, we like change. Â V.J’s weekly challenge is fittingly about home.)
Whatever you do
give it 110%
Father’s words
whirl,
confuse,
belittle
ambiguous, at best,
attainment remote
I am not enough
Good, better, best,
never let them rest…
morning chant –
eggs and bacon,
(seldom acceptable)
served up
by an ever-inadequate
mother,
Father’s criticism
whipping,
cruel
I will never be enough
apologize before beginning
a wallflower
on the social scene
a plebe
in the working world
presence hesitant
accomplishment tentative
Winners never quit and
quitters never win
blood boils
silently
I scream
Till I cannot bear one more
extempore lecture
face my foe
square on
catch a glimpse
of what?…
self-doubt?
fear?
These tirades
are not personal
it is not my ineptitude
at stake
merely the railings
of a tortured soul
trying to find
solid footing
on unsteady ground
I am learning to be enough.
(V.J.’s weekly challenge is accomplishment. Â I’ve been pondering why it is so difficult to feel as if I’ve accomplished anything, when logically I know I have. Â The daily prompts helped me to put this in context. Â Thanks for Fandango for ambiguous, Ragtag Community for extempore, Daily Addictions for remote.)
Is death a gentle reprieve,
a final release of suffering
a promised resting place?
Or is it contemplation
coloured by memories
demanding retribution?
Will death bring reunion
unleash forgiveness
shine with revelation?
Will one final earthly breath
call forth all the fragments of the soul
and restore wholeness?
I have witnessed death –
both embraced and unwanted –
snatch the spirit from its nest
felt the whoosh of escape
and a swirl of celebration,
known the peace that follows
witnessed the body, open-eyed
and open-mouthed
become a vacuum –
discarded membranes;
an impotent shell.
The spirit does not dwell there;
it lives on borrowed time.
Where it goes when all is done
remains life’s poignant mystery.
(Originally posted January of 2015, this poem fits V.J.’s Weekly Challenge theme of mystery, hosted on One Woman’s Quest II. Â There is still time to participate. Â Head on over and check it out.)
Jilted by a philandering husband and defrauded out of my share of the assets, I made a convincing victim.
“You are righteously angry,” a friend counselled.
Perhaps so, but something niggled at me.
“A man does not stray unless there is a reason,” someone said, and I felt as if she looked right through me, could see the flaws at my core. Â My mother’s repeated warnings came back to me: Â “No one will ever love you.”
What is wrong with me? Â my broken heart wailed.
Urgency drove me to find answers. Â I never wanted to go through this again. Â I had to know why my life had turned out this way.
I read.  I read Daphne Rose Kingma’s Coming Apart, and Susan Anderson’s The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, and The Mastery of Love by don Miguel Ruiz:  all offering glimpses of insight and understanding – something I could hold on to.  So many books passed through my hands and desperate to learn more, I turned to a galley copy of a book I’d received as a bookstore owner.  A commercial piece, now released, but that I’d never bothered with in the past, having stashed it beside many other soon-to-be published editions.
It was Relationship Rescue by Dr. Phil McGraw.
“Too Late for this, really,” I told myself but I decided to give it a chance.
Dr. Phil wrote the words I had suspected all along: Â good relationships begin with the self. Â His advice made sense, and more than that, I felt like I was finally onto something. Â I attacked the book as if reading a how-to manual, highlighter in hand and pencil at the ready.
Relationship Rescue delves into the different “bad spirits” that we bring to our relationships, and as I read along, I began to recognize bits of myself in the “scorekeeper”, the “fault-finder”, and the control freak, but when I reached the eighth category and began to read, I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach and wanted to throw up. I was the “bottomless pit”.
I told myself that I didn’t need anything so that I wouldn’t be a burden. Â What I was actually doing was sabotaging my partner’s chances of ever meeting my needs. Â “He should know without me telling him,” was another one of those false beliefs that I measured by husband against.
The spirit I brought to my marriage was ugly. Â I had so many expectations about what I wanted and didn’t want based on my parents failures that any partner was destined to fail.
With understanding comes change.  It would not be easy, and I am still a work in progress, but Relationship Rescue gave me solid understanding so that I can be accountable and achieve a healthier relationship.
My challenge this week is to write about (or submit images of) a book that made you sit up and pay attention. Â What book(s) made a difference in your life?
One Woman's Quest 