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When I was a boy, a big part of winter was going to the ice-skating rink in Winnetka when everything was frozen. We roller-skated in Glenview and bowled in beautiful downtown Northfield. Weather did not deter us. But when I turned about fourteen, this huge wind came along, and I went out and stood in it, and leaned into it, and after that I was not the same. I forgot all about school and in my heart became a wanderer. I left home one year later, off to see the world. I have had a wonderful relationship with the wind ever since.
She sketched the quiet,
with charcoal shadows and haunting trees,
bending to winds that whispered lies,
calling, but never her name.

Wildflowers leaned in defiance,
toward a light she could not feel,
children’s laughter, untamed rivers,
while hers unraveled into dust.

An old soul, they said,
drifting through doors left ajar,
a wanderer in borrowed lives,
but always a stranger,
always a ghost.

She craved the world,
its wild crescendos, its burning skies,
but the edges cut too deep.
Her hands, blistered from endless reaching,
held truths too sharp to release.
The rain came and kissed the earth,
but her skin held the stains,
red as warnings,
swollen like secrets buried alive.

The bruises healed but lingered,
etched on the walls of her mind,
like shadows curling tight
around a room with no escape.

She tasted love once,
a fleeting hymn in a cathedral of storms,
a breath of warmth on frostbitten lips.
He devoured the letters she wrote,
exhaling truths that burned through her chest.

No one knew the weight she bore,
the silence stitched across her ribs,
like velvet sewn with broken glass.
She wrote, she spun fragile threads of light,
a tapestry too beautiful to wear,
her soul adrift in a realm
untouched by what she could not name.

In the end, she lived
in the spaces between,
between the screams,
between the quiet,
between the words
she dared not sing.
Wishing you all a great week ahead ❣️
It’s hard to meet someone serious at college. Everyone’s busy,
self-centeredly grinding away at their dreams. So much so that
people tell you to not even try (especially as a freshman).

I was mostly at ease with myself—as a freshman. I had an
excellent skincare routine—it was downright luxuriant, and it
kept me going, through that romantically baren and lonely year.

But we humans hope—we buy lotto tickets to dream on—though we know the awful math. We Gen Z’s seem to have our own unique brand of loneliness, born of covid and Internet-age experience.

My romantic expectations, sophomore year, were low—ok, unmeasurable.

Looking around was depressing. There were socially awkward STEM majors, jocks, frat men (sure the world’s laid-out just for them) and ‘CSOM Bros" (business majors more interested in parlaying my Grandmère’s money than me) and the elusive, emotionally reserved, ‘regular guys.’

But the unexpected can happen. We all know how crowded campus coffee shops are—the students move in and out in tides as noisy as the real, salty ocean. And then there you were, a rumpled, 25-year-old doctoral student—from another world—asking to share my table.

The loudest thing in that room was your sense of stillness. You seemed to be a new and distinct species, and as we talked, you seemed to somehow smooth my anxious edges. After a few meets, the thought, ‘I really like this guy,’ seemed to have its own gravity.

We somehow managed to thread the ‘too busy to care’ dynamic, and as time went by, you helped me channel my absurd, fiery, pastel-painted, first-love, early-twenty girlhood heat into something longer lasting, deep and authentic. Congratulations! It’s been two years.

Separating now, would be like removing the salt from the sea.
.
.
Songs for this:
Playing House by Kudu
So Much Mine by The Story
After Last Night by The Revlons
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 01/16/25:
Parlay = to use something to get something of greater value.
At the border between garden and orchard,
an old door
with a rusted padlock. Rusted by rain or dew?

We walk through it barefoot blissful, cherubic.
My name: Volatile

Grandmother’s apron, a white cloud
scented with lavender
under which I’d bend my head
when the lamb gave birth,
sowing the air with as many photons
as star seeds
over hills, in summertime.

Then, the timeless joy –
children by the pond
gazing at the orange mill
brimming with moon.

Under the beam,
the braid of garlic cloves
– tiny lanterns
illuminating my height
on the spine of the door,
marked there by father,
his hands fragranced with walnuts,
and on the windowsill
the little sack of seeds waiting to defrost.

At the border between clay and star,
a narrow door
through which only we
could squeeze,
on a path of light.

by Liliana Ursu, translated by Mihaela Moscaliuc
Gazes magnetically meet
Across the crowded room
A slight touch of hands as we
Pass through the hallway
I steal a kiss when
No one's around

P.s. no one can know
About a girl I hurt a lifetime ago...
Ah, Arwell sailed the seven seas,
With gusts of wind and salty breeze,
A sailor bold, or so he claimed,
But mishaps followed, unashamed.

With compass lost, he'd oft declare,
"Ah well," he'd laugh without a care,
For Arwell's tales of naval pride,
Had more of humour than of guide.

One day he tried to catch a whale,
But hooked himself upon the sail,
"Ah well," he mused, in tangled plight,
As crewmates chuckled at the sight.

In stormy nights and waters rough,
His skills were lacking, sure enough,
Yet Arwell's charm and hearty cheer,
Could make the toughest sailor veer.

A pirate crew once came to fight,
With swords and pistols gleaming bright,
But Arwell tripped and splashed their guns,
"Ah well," he grinned, "the battle's done!"

Though navigation wasn't strong,
His friends knew where they did belong,
For Arwell's heart was kind and true,
And laughs were plenty, troubles few.

So raise your glass to Arwell's might,
The sailor who turned wrong to right,
With "Ah well" as his motto bold,
A tale of mirth forever told.
I believe that a haiku
is not just seventeen syllables
written in three lines, but
a poem, with three lines
that present distinct ideas
tied together, and brought together
by the poet artist,
who can constrain him or herself
and preferably there would be
one idea on the first line, 5,
enhanced on the second, 7,
and then both tied together
in the third, 5, totaling 17
so,
let us try harder
make sure that we are writing
interesting stuff

(or whatever, I don't know)
https://www.writebetterpoems.com/articles/how-to-write-haiku
There is only pain. He held her hands,
thin-*****, trembling, bird-brittle,
like the last leaves,
too tired to fall.

The prosaic life,
a numbing inventory of dull tasks—
each line scarring deeper,
the paper tearing.

They said she was dead,
perhaps in jest,
but her history whispered otherwise:
the needle’s hymn,
the razor’s sharp alphabet,
a body taught the language of harm.

He dreamed once of poems—
bright-winged things—
but they fell, crushed,
their syllables too thin
to shoulder the weight of her silence.

To be kind, to be gentle,
is to wound oneself slowly,
a quiet hemorrhage.
Even when it hurts, more,
especially then.
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