Second Thoughts # 5 – Clean Getaways

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It’s 8:15 P.M. on a Monday evening nineteen ninety-something, and my last load of laundry is two-quarters away from being done. I dig through a pile of old magazines and find one with a half-finished crossword. The hum of the dryer is soothing… hypnotic to a focused folder. Pearl Jam plays on a scratchy radio above the pop machine that never works. As a spring night hue casts in against a long wooden table of folded clothes and empty baskets reaching where I sat, a bell jingles. I’m the last one there. The sometimes friendly middle-aged attendant who’s been watching the one-channel TV eyeballs my sightline up the far wall across from me. Toward an overly huge numbered clock fixed on it. Below reads the hours of business. He silently without words offers me a delicate cycle amount of time by tapping his watch before my clean getaway ends its cycle. I nod in appreciation for the fifteen minutes and go back to my crossword tapping a half-chewed pen…

Let’s see… 6 Down, a bottle with a narrow neck…?

Shade of Ash # 36 – Keep Right, Accept to Pass

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Coping with my anxiety is like a bike ride. It’s hard to balance. There is a chance I will fall. Sometimes I do. But, I have to keep going if I am going to learn how to ride with it. – Ash

Before Goodnight # 2

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My body was controlled by my mind for a while now. Not in a good way. As my thoughts pierced me like bullets, I fell from the wounds they created. I was allowing my happiness to die by jumping in front of the fire. As I lay to sleep… my will is bulletproof. I only had to find it again.  – Ash

Deadman’s Cove

there was a day when the grass was the perfect green

the ocean glistened in morse code

each sparkle a story of its own

as I step lightly from rock to stone

saltwater breaths dry my lips

I wet them for a taste

we all know that birds sing

listen when they do

let them play out the tides

like that day that was just for me

on that beach of memories

with a shore full of driftwood and kelp

props in a backdrop of a day in my life

when I hear a crashing wave

when a warm breeze teases my step

and when mother nature holds out her hand

I grab on and go back again

Here Lies

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I called for you last night

it wasn’t for any of those other reasons we have

this time it was to tell you I was hurting

hurting still… only differently

differently, that poetry won’t mend

differently, that thoughts of you won’t pacify

differently, that distraction from you won’t make me forget

no, this time so different that even a superhero’s cape couldn’t save me

as I sit on the other side of a mountain of hope

I always thought you would answer my cry when it felt real to you

to whatever real means to you

I have done nothing over these years but climb that hope

over and over

thinking one day I would resurrect that real and make it come alive again

to finally know that you feel something for me

maybe that’s all my own dreams

and we know dreams are not real

one day dust will sweep over my body where it lay

marked for the rest of the world

with a sentence that I still continue to call out your name

from beneath my mountain of hope

that fell and crumbled the same day as I did

…your father

Shade of Ash # 35 – I’ve Come to a Resolution

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Someone asked me the other day if I was a new year’s resolution type of person. I said no. I am more of a new you resolution type of person which happens every day. Waiting a whole year to assess yourself and make changes seems a waste of time and creates pressure to not fail. We have to fail, to learn to win. We have to fall, to get back up. We have to lose to be grateful for what we already have. I continued to tell this person that I am a work in progress and it takes work each and every day and that’s the only resolution I need to keep. – Ash