Tag: memories

Sisters…

Sisters…

Now She Has The Time…


Now, She Has the Time
by Grace Christine Doucette

Mother, I wanted to visit you today
But I was too busy,
other things got in the way.
I knew you’d understand and not complain
You never want to put me under a strain.
So, my days slipped by without seeing you
But, I knew you were there, in plain view.
Now, I have the chance
to come spend time with you
But you’re not here. “Mum, where are you?”
God had the time so he took you away
To sit and talk to Him and quietly pray.
He fills your time with companionship
That I unaware, had slowly let slip.
I missed seeing your smile
and feeling your loving touch
And I forgot to say, “I love you so much.”
Now I have the time, “Mum, where are you?”

Deadly Friend

A young girl picks up a drink
Her fear and pain melts away,
She found a magic cure
She found a best friend today.
She takes that friend with her
Where ever she has to be,
The friend gets her through,
But she’s no longer free.
Hiding her new friend from the rest
It’s true, somehow she always knows,
That this friend is dangerous
But caution, to the wind it goes.
Years slip by, and some begin to see
That she prefers this friend,
People criticize her drinking
And other friendships end.
The bottle becomes her center
It directs her every move,
But what once brought her relief
No longer seems to soothe.
The friend who helped her through
Now cripples, and blinds her sight,
Alone she drinks and she cries
Dreading tomorrow, hating tonight.
She gave up all her friends
To keep the brown liquid close,
Now she has lost them all
Betrayed by what she trusted most.
She reaches out to God
During a desperately lonely hour,
He sends her back His love
He fills her with His power.
She ends the deadly friendship
Stands strong and free again,
The black fog begins to lift, and
Sobriety is one fight, she does win.

Jeanne Marie, 1979

 

Would I?

1989

Roses are my favorite, 1989

Roses are my favorite, 1989

 

A Note From Grace (My Mom)

grace garden sit

A NOTE FROM GRACE (My Mom)
When my children were growing up and got into their “teenage problem” years, I’d become exasperated with them. I’d think, “They’re just like their father!”
Then, one day the light dawned on me, (Marblehead) because after taking a hard, honest look at myself, I realized; they were just like me. The me I had suppressed and hidden deep inside, where no one else could see. I was as wild and rebellious as they, but I had put up a shield of adult perfection, striving to become the perfect mother that everyone expected me to be.
I have now learned that I need to let this child in me come out to play, or the adult becomes a cold hard shell. I must confess, now that I’m older, I have to do this through my books, and old TV movies.
My mind wants to run through fields of flowers with all my clothes flung aside, but my body slows me down to a stroll through Wal-Mart, wrapped in warm sweaters.

The House That Never Sleeps (The VA Hospital) by Jean Burbine

THE HOUSE THAT NEVER SLEEPS
(The VA Hospital)
BY Jean Burbine

I work in the house that never sleeps.
It hides the smiles of the man who weeps.
They come with a limp, with a faltering walk.
Some with a smile for they cannot talk.
Men come with their pain, their fading sight
and find a helping hand from the angels in white.
“Let me push your chair, let me help you walk.”
“Let me be your eyes, and your tongue to talk.”
And all through the night as the rays of dawn creeps,
they stand by your side in the house that never sleeps.

Clutter

Clutter

Some of the Advantages of Getting Older

gracewrites006
By Grace Christine Doucette (My mom)
I can wear a red hat with a green blouse and yellow pants. People just shake their heads and think, “Well, she’s old.”
Strong young men accost me just to put my groceries in my car. As I adjust my wig, they walk away with a smile, thinking, “Well, she’s old.”
I can smile and wink at every handsome man I see, young or old, and receive a smile or wink in return. It’s safe to flirt now, “I’m old.”
People let me cut in at the grocery store checkout line, and they smile when I have to ask, “What’s the date?” “Oh well, she’s old.”
I can add ten years to my age and smile when people say, “You look so good for your age!”
I can ask for directions, and people lead me right to the place. They don’t want me to get lost, cause “I’m old.”
When I go to the laundry mat, I can mix my colors and my whites in one load. I don’t even flinch when an organized woman sorts her laundry and shakes her head at me, thinking, “She’s old.”
The secret no one knows, is that I present this old face to the world, while inside a young woman laughs at my private joke.
“Who’s old? Not me!”
I love to send scribbles to WWTTM and see them emerge legible and in sharp clean print. I can expose my innermost thoughts to you all and you can laugh at me or with me. I’ve found new friends, though you’re far away and I can’t see your faces, you are all near and dear to me.
I’m not sad about getting older, I did it one day at a time. I’m a product of all my yesterdays, the good and the bad. Today I like who I am, and when I look in the mirror I can honestly say, “Well done kiddo, you did the best you could with what you had!”

The Wedding Heels

I’m trying to de-clutter my life and unravel my mind.
Yesterday, I threw my thirty-five-year-old, size five wedding heels in the trash. I tried on a lot of shoes before I found the perfect heels. They were important. My future mother-in-law bought them for me. She wasn’t impressed by her son marrying a woman with three kids, so they were a peace-offering.
The heels have stuck around. They made the cut every time I packed. They have been with us to fifteen houses and a dozen apartments.
I had hoped to wear them again, maybe on an anniversary, but that’s not going to happen.
My feet are no longer small and petite, and my husband and I have separated.
I looked at the shoes laying there in the trash, taunting me, reminding me of my wedding day, and I pushed them in deeper. I instantly panicked, but I took deep breaths and I walked away.
Later, I carried the bag outside to the trash can.
Today, I was out front tearing open the trash bags. Coffee grounds, dog’s pee papers, egg shells and dirty paper plates, I found.
No shoes.
I gave up easy, compared to my norm.
I’m not a quitter. I held on to those heels for thirty-five years.
I stopped because I knew it was hopeless.
I could save the heels. But I couldn’t save us.
I’m strong and I’m weak. I’m resisting the urge to go back out there now.
I just want the trash truck to come and take the heels away before I give in to my compulsion to bring them back into the house.
If I can leave the heels in the trash, maybe I’ll make it through this after all.
P.S. The trash men came and the shoes have gone to their final resting place.

Another Christmas for Grace

My dad was an alcoholic and Christmas was his favorite time of the year to tear up the house, a futile attempt to destroy my mother’s Christmas spirit.
He never succeeded with her, but he made me dread Christmas.
When I was a young mother, I didn’t really celebrate Christmas, not until the kids were toddlers and even then, I just went through the motions for them.
When I was twenty-seven, I got remarried to a man who made a big deal of Christmas.
Until our first Christmas together, I had never put up more than a 2′ ceramic tree, and only because my mom had special ordered it for me.
Our first year together, we put up a 6′ tree with all the trimmings and we surrounded it with presents.
The kids were so excited on Christmas morning and it was contagious.
From that point on, I grew to love Christmas and all that it meant to the kids.
My mom was so proud of me for overcoming my childhood Christmas phobias and soon, I had enough homemade decorations from my mother to cover an entire tree.
I used to love to send her pictures of the tree decorated with her ornaments.
I put up big trees until my youngest moved out, and then I still put up trees, just not as large.
As my kids had kids of their own, I split Mom’s decorations between them and I bought new decorations for me.
Every year, I would do a different theme, bouncing between girly and guy.
All miniature dolls and fairies one year and all Harley-Davidson decorations another year. Pink trees, white trees, purple trees, gold and green. Even a Palm tree one year.
Then, my mom, Grace, died in 2009.
I had a hard time again, but my sister, Cherie, talked me into putting up a tree just for my mom and she sent me butterflies and fairies to decorate it.
That was my first Christmas for Grace.
The next year, it. became a tradition, one tree for Mom, one for me.
Three years ago, my husband and I split up and although I put up a small tree for Mom, I didn’t really celebrate Christmas.
We got back together after seven months and we had two more nice Christmases together, but we separated again this fall, and now here I am, my second Christmas without him in thirty-eight years.
I really didn’t know how I was going to get through it.
I decided the first thing I needed to do was to buy a Christmas tree in a color I had never had before.
I resisted the urge to buy blue for a Blue Christmas, and before I could change my mind, I ordered a turquoise colored Christmas tree. That was in October.
It sat in the box for about a month, while I thought about it.
What would I put on it?
That’s when my sweet friend, Michelle Marie, came to the rescue. She called and offered me enough decorations to do my whole tree. When she brought them to me on Thanksgiving weekend, I was thrilled. They were so beautiful and unlike anything I had ever used before.
My kids came with their kids for Thanksgiving weekend and I asked the three youngest ones to decorate the tree.
Four-year old Mile Mae, got on her daddy’s shoulders to put the star on, and while the entire tree leans, including the star, it’s perfectly imperfect. It’s rather Grinch like, and that was my mom’s favorite movie.
After they were all gone, I brought out some of my little fairies, my mom’s butterflies and a few special ornaments. I added them to the tree. The tree lights are pink and at night, it changes the tree’s color and the walls around it glow.
So, although it is a sad Christmas for me in many ways, I have kept my Christmas spirit going, partly in honor of my mother who refused to let an insane alcoholic destroy her Christmas spirit and partly in honor of myself, because I deserve a happy and blessed Christmas, and yes, I am blessed.
I have fifteen grandkids and five great-grandchildren, a beautiful, warm home, food and everything I need.
I firmly believe Jesus is the reason for the season, but when your grandkids are small, it’s also about glitz and glitter and shiny presents and stockings filled to the brim, hugs and love, Oreo’s and milk, all waiting for them at Grammy’s house.
So this tree is for them, and for my mom, the woman who taught me that your Christmas will become whatever you choose to make it, and for my sister, who wouldn’t let me quit Christmas after my mom died.
Special thanks to Michelle Marie for the perfectly timed decorations and thank you Jesus, for another Christmas and another chance to make memories with my family and friends.

Christmas For Grace

 

 

where do you run to woman 

where do you run to woman
when there’s no where left to go?
your feet are slowing down
your body is broken and old.
you still wanna run
you still wanna go
you wanna keep moving
from sunshine to tornadoes to snow.
where do you run to woman
when there’s no where left to go?
fifteen houses and seven states
moving trucks and new couches
starting over again, it’s a temporary relief
such an insane, disastrous distraction
cause you always pack the same problems
between your books and your shoes.
where do you run to woman
when there’s no where left to go?

I Am Sixty-Five, Thank you Jesus

August 11, 2018
Thank you Jesus, for allowing me to live to the age of sixty-five, a blessing that many never receive and for helping me to learn to live with the wrinkles.
Thank you for forty-two years of sobriety with only one night of insane drinking.
Thank you for the man in my life who has loved me with his entire heart. He loves me on my best days and even harder on my worst days.
Thank you for my daughter’s life, her sobriety, her sweet, forgiving, beautiful heart and the love that she showers on me. Thank you for the beauty that she sees in me.
Thank you for my four children, fifteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, my sisters, my family and my few, true friends.
Thank you for one beautiful house after another all the way up to fifteen, for the many moves you’ve allowed us to make safely and for all the wonderful places we’ve been able to explore.
Thank you that I can still walk when all my x-rays declare that I shouldn’t be able to get out of bed.
Thank you for the awesome gifts you tucked into my heart when you formed me, the ability to play with words and the creative ideas that flow through me.
Thank you for all the pretty clothes in my closet and all the books on my shelves.
Thank you for the successful surgery that allows me wear normal shoes for the first time in almost twenty years, and for my pink boots that I picked out as a birthday present.
Thank you for the music that blesses my life.
Thank you for the church that you led my body to because as you know, it blesses my spirit, even though it was 1800 miles away from my house at the time.
Thank you for every breath that I take and for every day I wake to find another chance. Amen.

The Table & Chairs

 

My old table and chairs have been freshly painted and they’re adorable, but that’s not all there is to it.

They have traveled a long, rough road to land pretty on my front porch.

I’ll start with when I first remember seeing them in my mom’s living room. They were brand-new, white.

I was thirty-something with three young kids and my sister, seven years younger, had four young kids.

My mom had a small basement apartment underneath my aunt’s house, but she had one closet full of blankets and pillows that we would use when we slept over. We would just spread them all over the tiny living room and it would be wall-to-wall kids.

Mom never cared how small her place was, she always had room for all of us.

We would cook huge Sunday dinners in her little kitchen, and then we would all stand there together doing the dishes.

In the evening, after the kids would settle down, my sister would put a table-cloth on the little table and a candle. She would say we were in a French bistro.

Then she would ask me to read some of my poems, which I always just happened to have with me.

For an hour so, we would all be transported to a little café in France and I was the entertainer.

My mom was my first reader and fan, but they were all my very first audience and their love for my writing carried me on waves of encouragement.

I didn’t find out until many years later that my sister also wrote poetry, and I was stunned when I read it because it was so much better than mine. She always gave me the spotlight.

My mom passed away in 2009, and I don’t know when my older sister acquired the table, but she graciously gave it to me when I asked her for it last spring. She also gave me the round cushions.

The little set traveled eighteen hundred miles with me to my new home.

My husband spent days painting it and repairing the metal binding around the table. Butterflies surrounded him as he worked, even landing on his hands.

I scrubbed it down before it was painted and butterflies were landing all over it then too.

My mom is a butterfly, so I believe the restoration made her happy.

Now that it’s finished, just looking at it makes me smile, overcome by the flood of memories it invokes.

I had my coffee at it this morning and as butterflies flitted by, I could feel my family, young and unscathed by the heartaches yet to come, unburned by the tragedies and the pain we would all go on to experience.

Those were innocent days. I just didn’t know. I am thrilled to have the table to remind me.

 

It’s The Memories

We start out with nothing and we pick up a lot of things along the way. Some of the things are important and some of them are not.
Some of those things bring us joy and some of them bring us down. Some of them actually hinder us and so many hurt us.
Today, I sit here wondering, where are the letters I wrote to you when you were a baby?
In our crazy lives, we have moved so many times and lost so many material things, and I wonder, are baby letters material things or are they heart things?
I always tell you that you are my sunshine and the first time I told you that you were two years old.
I sat down that night and I wrote you a letter so that you would always know, no matter where you went, if we were together or apart, that you were a ray of sunshine in my life.
Since then, we’ve put a lot of miles on our boxes and our possessions.
We have traveled to different states, to different apartments and lived in dozens of houses.
A lot of memory boxes have been lost along the way.
I spent a moment regretting those losses, wishing I still had your baby book and your brother’s Hot Wheels and Lego’s and your hippie christening dress, but then I remember that most importantly, I still have you and your brother, and all the moments I spent with your sister.
I own my memories and I don’t need to carry around all the boxes.
Even knowing that, I still have way too many boxes because every time I lose a memory box, I hold on tighter to stuff.
I think today I need to clean out some of the boxes and lighten my load because in the end we come with nothing and we leave with nothing.
It’s all the people we love in between our beginnings and our endings that matter and the things we carry around are not important.
The best things can’t be packed up in a box…the memories, the love and the moments.
The boxes are just stuff that can be lost.
We own our precious memories, the moments and the love already received, because those things are safe, packed in our hearts and in our minds.

The Princess

The Princess was sitting in her castle and she swore no man would she let woo.

She turned them all away as she said, no, not you, not you, not you, to myself I will be true.

She danced with her butterflies, she twirled in her flower gardens like when she was two.

She whispered to her flowers, confessing, I love you and you and you.

So happy was this woman that she vowed never to wed and then a Knight in dazzling armor appeared at the castle gates, the sun shining on his head.

She was blinded by his beauty, aura like spun gold and this one Knight she invited to her bed, visions of together growing old.

Prince Charming was his name and wow, that man tickled her fancy with his soft kiss and even if he just walked by, she would stumble and a step she would miss.

Well, we all know about no such thing as happy endings and soon the Princess gave up her other loves, like her writing.

She was busy twisting and turning and bending to keep the Prince happy, looking in her mirror-mirror and often sitting there silently for hours.

The Prince started kissing her less and less often and his voice for her…he no longer softened.

Many nights she cried herself to sleep, under so many full moons…she would weep and weep and weep.

Many moons later, she came to her senses, had the guards toss the Prince out and around her old gardens she built stronger fences.

This is a true story and you know it’s true, because I was the Princess and you, you were the Knight I gave my heart too.

Silly Princess, Stupid Boy, hard lessons, me and you.

The Farm-House

 

20180506_135818
I dreamed of the farm-house again last night.
When I saw the numbers match the numbers on the ticket in my hand at the end of the 10:00 o’clock news, when I learned that I’d won the lottery, before I even had the money in my hand, before I took the tiny slip of paper to the Lotto office to be sure it was really the single winning ticket for the $90 million dollar jackpot, I threw my cigarettes, a tooth-brush and my Master Card into my purse. I ran out to the driveway, tore open the door of my blindingly yellow Dodge Hemi truck, turned the key, felt the thunder as the engine roared to life and I flew out of the driveway.
I sped to the Tulsa airport, disregarding the speed limit because I was rich now. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t thinking that money made me above the law, but I could definitely afford to pay a speeding ticket.
I parked the truck in the long-term parking lot, ran inside the terminal to the first counter I saw and walked away with a ticket for American Airlines Flight 144 to Boston.
After a take-forever walk through security, I raced down the chintzy red carpet, catching the flight attendant’s attention just before he shut the door.
I was going home. My husband always told me that it wasn’t home anymore, that home was where we lived, in our 1986 trailer home set on two acres of Heaven in Owasso, Oklahoma.
I always said, “You’re right, honey.”
But he wasn’t.
As the many plaques will tell you, home is where your heart is and I had left mine on the cold, wet sand of Plum Island, nesting in the sand dunes I had crawled on before I could walk and then when I was older, I’d left more of me on the hot, sandy beaches of Hampton and Salisbury.
The last pieces I can remember seeing were hidden in the tunnels behind the walls of the farm-house, the tunnels where I had stashed my baby sister, playing quietly with her on the dusty floor so dad wouldn’t find us or hiding with Mom when the bill collectors pounded on our door.
When the wheels came down as we flew over the water of Revere Beach, I held my breath. I didn’t breathe again until the plane’s wheels touched the runway.
As the familiar seat belt ding sounded, everyone rushed to their feet.
I grabbed my purse and I pushed along with the crowd of people who also wanted off the plane, now.
I headed straight for the Avis counter and rented a luxury car with no idea of where I wanted to go or why I had flown eighteen hundred miles on the very day the lottery had blessed (or cursed) my life. All I knew for sure was that I was going to kidnap my Mom out of the nursing home and she was coming with me for one wild ride.
The car almost drove it self as I left the Avis parking lot. I think that the auto pilot of my soul was driving.
I sped along Route 93 with my feet driving and my heart dancing.
Suddenly, I knew where I was going! My urges were taking me back to the farm-house on High Street, to the house that my dad had bought for $8,000.00 only to give it back to the bank several years later.
So many times, I had dreamed of that familiar front door opening to me.
The present owner would throw open the solid white, wooden door with red trim, welcoming me home. The dream varied, probably depending on what I ate before I fell asleep.
Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man, but the answer-er always allowed me to wander down the hallowed halls of my dysfunctional, childhood home. Well, one of many, but the first real house with running water, walls, doors and a roof the rain didn’t ping off.
The farm-house that I’d been forced to leave behind when I was still a young girl.
In my memories, the curtains that my mom had sewn on her push pedal Singer sewing machine still hung in the living room windows.
I remembered the day she’d made them. I remembered the scent of the hot, damp cotton as she’d ironed each panel and hung it. I remembered the look of pride on her face as she stood back and smiled at what she had created.
I’d left a shard of me behind when I’d left that farm-house while taking a fragment from the walls. A sharp; yet, comforting splinter and it was still tucked away safely inside my heart’s vault.
A splinter that led me home, if only in my dreams, over and over.
Somehow the wood and the mortar had become entwined with my soul, an intrinsic puzzle I could not solve.
Finally, I could buy that now declared historic house, no matter the cost.
Panic pulsed through my veins and I asked myself, what am I doing?
Did I think that I could move back to the farm-house and did I think that I could start my life over again?
I guess so because I had dreams when my mind went back there, so I figured my body could too.
If I went back to there, could I go back to then and start my life over and change my now?
Could I hide in the secret tunnels and let time remove the stains and the hurts I had gathered in the years since I had left?
These were the questions searing my brain as I drove toward Billerica, doing forty miles over the speed limit.
I had to buy the house before I went to get Mom.
Money could bring my mom back to her house, the house she’d lost so long ago.
I dreamed of the farm-house again last night.

 

So Small

My six-foot son hugged me and as he let go of me, he looked down and he said, “Mom, you’re so small. You used to be so much bigger.”
I told him that I was the same height. “You have grown. I haven’t shrunk.”
He said, “No, not that, I don’t mean your height. It’s just that I used to be so much smaller, so you seemed so much bigger.”

Happy 64th To Me! (Last August)

A Tulsa Promenade Dillard’s Birthday
Happy 64th To Me!
Every year since I turned 60, I try to do something special for myself on my birthday.
This year, I spent the entire day at Dillard’s where my daughter, Jodie Lynne, works and we shopped during her lunch hour.
Of course, after she went back to work, I continued shopping!
Luckily, I love the clearance racks but a few full price items did sneak into my pile, lol.
After I wore my feet out shopping, Jodie convinced me to walk over and let the Edge Beauty Tulsa women give me a makeover.
She really did have to convince me because for some reason I felt shy about it…so thank you, Jodie Lynne.
It was an incredible experience!
First of all, if you know me, you know I would not want a normal makeover.
I wanted a pink makeover and my makeup artist Kalee delivered to the max.
The look began as a pink makeover but as it evolved, I decided I wanted to be a pink fairy and Kalee just went with the creative flow, giving me quick peeks and playing with the colors…
She was incredible to work with and so intuitive and open to what I wanted.
She didn’t act like she was working at all because she loves doing makeup so much that it was like she was playing, so we both had a blast and I felt like it was girl’s night out with a best friend.
Of course, the makeover ended with a glitter brush splash.
Kalee said I was like a ray of sunshine and that I had made her day. Wow. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since someone said that to me…
You know, I honestly haven’t been doing a lot of shining so the entire mother-daughter, Dillard’s Edge makeover with Kalee, shopping for myself experience brought out the sun-shiny part of me that’s been hiding.
And there’s a really funny thing about age. Sometimes it shows to the max and sometimes my age just seems to drop away and I become just me, just a woman who accepts herself no matter her age or her wrinkles.
By the time Jodie and I got home, I felt high as a pink cloud in the sky.
I put on one of my new outfits and some of Jodie’s very high heels, even though I had to squeeze a crippled foot into one of them. I also wore my awesome pink bracelet, a present from my best friend, Michelle Marie.
Jodie took pictures of me and I took selfies with her and we had a picture party.
Now, I have proof that I still know how to shine.
All I have to do is let go and play.
Huge thanks to all who were involved starting with Athena, who babysat Cole and Jonas, my grandsons and took them to play laser tag and to McDonald’s, freeing me to play.
Triple huge thanks to Jodie Lynne and Kalee.
And I cannot forget to thank all the wonderful people I met at Dillard’s as I flitted through the Cosmetics Department, meeting Jodie’s coworkers and her managers.

I also was blessed to have two grandsons with me to help celebrate that evening.
My ten-year-old grandson Cole had come to visit his Papa and me in NH for the summer.
He came the first week of June and I brought him home to Oklahoma this week.
We almost made our visit last until our birthdays, but we had to celebrate a bit early. Mine is August 11th and his is August 10th.
Usually we split the difference and eat our  carrot cake at midnight on the 10th.
We have spent the last few days at his Aunt Jodie’s and Athena’s house with his cousin Jonas and last night we celebrated three August birthdays.
We bought enough cake for the two non-birthday people (Jodie and Jonas) because it just seemed like the right thing to do.
I’m glad we did that because I ate the leftover chocolate cake this morning!
Cole’s dad picked him up this morning and they hugged forever.
When I got home to New Hampshire, my husband took me out for a seafood dinner, so all in all…
I never plan my birthday, I just let it unfold and this was one of the best and hopefully, I have many more to come.

I Unwish The Wish…

My mind is clouded with thoughts
but none that I can speak.
The words have all been spoken and
thoughts disintegrate as I attempt
to form words that I could say.
My mind is burdened with memories
but I have no more sentences for you.
I wish I did.
My words will not make sense to you
as your’s make none to me,
we said everything that we could say
the silence is deafening
as we stare at the damn TV.
I wish…I wish…
I could just show you my heart
and that I could see yours
so that we could understand.
Then I remember how hard we
struggle with each other’s reality
and we don’t have a backup plan.
So I unwish the wish and
I write words that are my truth
over and over again.
Hoping my head will believe
the words that my soul writes.

this could be magic

Choices

She started to think about what she wanted to experience before she died and it went like this…she wanted to be made love to like he had never seen her before and she was the most precious thing in the world that he could ever touch or possess.
She wanted him to say her smile made his day and lit up his world.
She wanted him to hold her as he was sleeping, wrapped all around her and never letting go all night.
She wanted to dance around the bedroom with him at midnight. Dancing slow, to a country love song, held so tight she could barely breathe, dancing with the man she loved as he whispered, “I am so sorry, I didn’t know how much I loved you,” in her ear.
She wanted to be loved like that once more before she died.

Self-Destruct

I ran into a summer life
I tried it on
I tasted it
I loved it
I lost it
and I ran back to snow.
Why I didn’t keep on
tasting
loving
finding
I’ll never know.
Fear grabbed the wheel
drove me quite mad.
Panic navigated, flying
through mountains
sliding across icy roads,
dumped me back here
freezing in the bitter snow.

Inside The Picture

harrietcheriebilljea081
Sitting on a porch swing
at her country home
I never saw a face
that looked so all alone.
She gazes into space
her eyes are far away
I wonder where she is
she isn’t in today.
I see a little girl
in the woman’s eyes
a hurt and lonely child
I hear her softly cry.
The pain of dreams now lost
the scars that still remain
when I look at her picture
all I can see is pain.
She captures my heart
I want to hold her tight
I run to save the woman
the girl hides in fright.
The girl plagues the present
with all her musty fears
if I could console the girl
I’d end the woman’s tears.

by Jeanne Marie, 1986

Empty Spaces


Empty spaces
trying to put my life
back together again
but I’m missing
some of the pieces
completely lost them
yes, I do know when.
Empty spaces
jagged edges
used to fit so well
wounds do not heal
pictures once complete
or almost anyway
faces gone, oh hell.
Empty spaces
where dreams fell
through the cracks
lost, in total disarray
chaos rules
blood drips red
suffering with
silent sadness.
Empty spaces
buried hopes lay dead
shivering, icy cold
heart turned to stone
not a thought
left in my head.