When I think of Christmases past, I remember the school concerts we had every year. After dark bus rides, dress pants too short, running around your classrooms at night, and those blinding stage lights. The moment you spotted your family you instantly wished you never. It was usually the moment my voice cracked.
Ah, the Christmas concert. It was the only time I ever wore tights and didn’t get arrested.
What’s your memory of Christmas concerts? Come on, let me know in the comments. Don’t give in to stage fright!
Be as the ocean and never stop trying to reach the shore. The harder you struggle, the stronger your waves become. Storm those beaches and change the tide in your favour. – Ash
I’m sorry you were alone when the faces drifted away. When your days got stolen and good nights emptied. Just a vessel that you God, abandoned. Someone who gave up her soul before she was given one. Where were you when she asked to remember? Why did you punish her when all she did was repeat your name in prayer? Lord, her story deserved a better ending. At least, you could have allowed her to say goodbye to her favourite characters. But, I bet she forgave you too, after paying a toll at the gate. Not for herself… …for me.
I’ve always been told that things happen for a reason. I know that’s sometimes a way of making me feel better when life hits a rough patch. Although, I’ve come to look at it like this. It’s not so much of what happens to us that needs a reason, but rather, how we learn and move on from it a better person that does. That’s the reason it’s a good thing. – Ash
It was as midnight as midnight could be that late, dogs cried at the moon all the way down as I followed you straight to an early grave not once knowing ignorant, childish, wishing for my own home we shared nothing no words, not a glance, not even…presence only fading footsteps in the rain before you went to a place you felt you had to regret I held in a subtle hello maybe I would have turned it off stood a final chance and shooed the voice away from you but when lady death came teasing your ear? there was no way I, me… someone who would just threaten a made up mind compete that night with deathly songs of teenage tragedy singing you toward an infinite dark by the tune of your own broken heart stealing any lust left for tomorrow then I watched as you walked toward the Bluest Oyster never to see you again
Every picture tells a story or is a key to one. – Ash
Whenever I see a pile of wood by the side of the road or in someone’s front yard, it instantly takes me back to when I was kid. I believe I was around ten years old. Back that humbling day when I tried to prove to my Uncles that I was just as big and tough as they were. A coming of age moment of my life with a Shade of Ash humour that I will never forget. A bunch of wood grouped together sets the scene and some of you already know this, but I grew up with my grandparents, so my Uncles are like my brothers. There’s five of them. I made six, and the youngest in that dynamic and because of that, I was considered “Mommy’s Boy”. *I called my grandmother, Mom, by the way.
OK, Cue the wavey time-travel lines, fade to the 80’s.
Firewood was a primary source of heat for us growing up, so from time to time, that meant the whole family would have to pitch in and help bring freshly cut wood from my grandfather’s boat up to the front yard to be packed and stacked. Every now and again, my grandfather accompanied by two or three of the Uncles would travel by boat to some remote area to cut down the wood. Then, once they had a load, they would return home where the wood still had to be sawed up and stored away. None of that process involved me though. I got off the hook for stuff like that. Hey! It’s not me, my grandmother just wouldn’t have it back then. She’d look at my Uncles, each of them, and tell them to go on outside and not bother me. “Leave Ashley alone, he’s alright, go on, your fathers waiting.” She’d say. This rotted my uncles of course. Now, they wouldn’t say much in retort and just went on to work. Though like prisoners knowing all the blind spots of a prison yard, they too knew when to get in a few licks and wrestling moves behind my grandparents backs to make sure I knew what’s up. Until that one day, where I had enough of it.
Irish night with a few black beers for luck stood elbow to elbow in the midst of strange drunkards three sheets to the wind placing little wagers before the clock struck and the tender turns us away like the last three nights we’ve been
Earth To Ash 