by

A Bittersweet First

For the first time in my life, I have a Valentine for Valentine’s Day. By the grace of the Goddess we were both off from work today and were able to spend the majority of the day together.

I did not receive a card from my Valentine. He did not buy me roses. He ordered pizza in for our dinner tonight and we had orange Crush instead of champagne or wine. And for the larger portion of the past four hours or so, we’ve both been online. He playing video games. Me doing schoolwork and writing this post. He was forced to leave the apartment while he drove to pick up his friend despite the fact that I had a bloody nose and got a few feet up the street before his “friend” called and said he had gotten a ride. Which put both of us in a bad mood. So, much for the bitterness.

After one of his friends who likes to play video games with him and stayed the night last night left, we walked to a little Mexican cantina and got some yummy drinks. When we returned home, I took a shower and we set out to the movies. We’d missed the final matinée showing, so waited until the eight o’ clock showing of Underworld: Awakening–which by the way is all kinds of awesome, assuming that you’re not a pop-culture aficionado who has no knowledge of the mythos that the story hinges on. I for one thoroughly enjoyed the movie even though it was the first installment of that franchise I’d seen. I enjoyed the fact that we walked around before the movie and earlier in the day. I got to have a conversation with my boyfriend as I’ve not been able to since we moved in together (we both work too much, not that he’s insensitive). What I loved most was that it was he who pointed out that, except for the time of day, we were recreating our first date. We even went to the very same movie theater.

The movie gave me an idea. It is likely, there will very soon begin to appear novel manuscript within this blog.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

by

Welcome, All!

On this first day of February, when Spring is beginning to stir beneath Winter‘s pall, I am pleased to write of a rebirth of my own. I am continuing a blog that was once named Vertess with this post. The blog’s title has indeed changed, as has the name under which I publish and of course the theme of the blog itself has changed, but all else has remained the same.

This day marks Mother Earth’s first stirrings towards Spring. Some call it Imbolc, some Candlemas, and there are several other names that mark this first tremble in the web of Life. My celebration of the day has been rather mundane by necessity. Having not even five dollars after paying bills and rent at the end of each month, there truly is no money for ritual supplies. Of course, a clean house I feel is a very appropriate way to welcome and greet the spirits of Spring. So, that is what I did this morning.

I cleaned as much of my apartment as I could without waking my boyfriend, watered the plants around our home, and finally made an offering of lavender-scented oil to the Ladies and Lords of Spring.

And because the day is fine, I’ve opened the sliding door to let in light, air, and Spring Herself.

I have come to a realization that I need not remain in any one mode of employment. When I have unburied myself from the debt that now presses me, I can change careers again. I can transition from paralegal to writer and by then my beloved and I will have a truly fresh start. My dream has not died, it merely sleeps like a seed in Winter, waiting for the first breath of Spring to wake it. And like all else in this world, when it is my dream’s time to bloom, it will indeed bloom. All that is necessary now is to water the ground where it sleeps, and try not to allow weeds to encroach upon its bed.

by

“And So With A Kiss, I Die”

Yesterday marked the last breath of my dream to become a “real” writer. Yesterday, I enrolled in an associates degree program for paralegal studies. With the average paralegal working 40 hours per week, minimum, there is no way for me to ever keep up with this blog let alone “pen” all the stories and poems that have flooded my soul for more than three decades.

I have made the one sacrifice I was fighting the large portion of those decades to avoid. I’ve sacrificed my soul so that the man I love can have a more comfortable life. My beloved has been my reason for many of the sacrifices I’ve made so far. This last is by far the most painful, but in the end no less necessary than all the others. I once told him there was nothing I wouldn’t do to defend and “keep” him. Once again, though I doubt he’ll ever realize the toll this last sacrifice takes, I have kept my promise.

Thank you to all my readers and to my two followers, whose interest in this blog brought such glimmers of hope that my dream would at last become a reality.

The poison is bitter. The priest lied, it kills me too slowly. But, as for the hope I’d had that my love and I could stand against the world, that hope is growing. Alas, the me that will stand with him until he leaves her is not me. She is my shell. The husk my soul left behind when she accepted the poison that no one was able to take from her or drink for her. “And so with a kiss, I die.”

by

And A Bullet In My Head

I had truly been hoping that the bad luck that stalked me through out 2011 would have lost my scent by now. It lost the trail on 18 July last year. That’s when I met my beloved. But, it seems to have picked it up again and is now trailing us both. Last night things seemed especially bad.

Last night I actually cried in the break room at work. I can never recall another time in all five years I’ve been employed there that I cried there. The only other person to witness my sob-fest made a good point while she comforted me: even though my walk through Hell has been a 31-year journey, I now have my beloved to walk with me and his presence is going to change everything. It already has.

The simple fact that this blog exists and that I am able to have time to update it at all is largely due to him. More importantly though, I have a roof over my head and food to eat primarily because of him. Never since my father’s death have I felt so safe in the presence of a man. Never since my father’s death have I been able to be held by any man and feel utterly, absolutely safe in his arms–and more than that feel protected from all the world, including myself!

The life I’ve led would make a Hollywood screenwriter green with envy were I to publish it, and most people would claim it was a work of fiction. But, now I may at last get my Hollywood hey-day happy ending. Maybe now, I’ll have found the one person who will honor and respect me and treasure me for the me that I am, not the me that they wish I could be, or the me that I should be.

There was a night not long after we met when my love and I were wrapped in eachother’s arms and he said, “You is here forever. Forever. I will has a place of my own and someone to snuggle every night, and put a bullet in my head.”

At once touched and alarmed, I said, “You know if you do that they’ll have to put me in lock-up and get very creative about keeping me alive. Besides, why would you want to put a bullet in your head, silly boy?”

“If you die, baby.” He answered without hesitation and patted my thigh.

Through even the darkest times I’ve faced these last few months, it is only because my beloved has stood steadfastly beside me that I am writing these words now. Those last few months of 2011 and these first few days of 2012 would have been some of my darkest, except that my beloved still guards me.

Last night he texted me, “Zloves you baby.”

“Loves you too. Work is sucking hard! I really need a bullet to the head. It’ll solve all my problems.” I replied.

He responded, “It be ok.”

All I really needed last night was to go home and find him there. He ensured he was the first thing I saw when I walked in. Just the sight of him made everything better again. I mean to write myself a plaque to hang on my locker door at work: so long as I walk in the shelter of my beloved’s wings, no power in all of heaven, earth, or hell can do us harm.

Christians and perhaps several other religions will say that statement is blasphemy, arrogance, or both. I say, because I believe it, it is true of my situation. After all, “believing is seeing”–as I heard in a movie, though I honestly can’t remember which. How better to see and recognize Truth than through the eyes of Belief?

by

The Rebirth of Light

At 12:33am ET Thursday morning the Winter Solstice opened the doorway from darkness back to light. The Wheel of Time has turned one full revolution once again. And Light once again grows in the womb of Creation waiting to be reborn with the Earth on the First of February.

While I sit here contemplating Yule, as the celebration of the Winter Solstice is sometimes called, I look back on a year whose only blessings and only joys came from having found love in the shape of my boyfriend. 2011 did have a few gifts from friends and one or two offerings from relatives, but only my beloved and what he has done for and brought into my life simply by being himself can truthfully be called “blessings,” unless the meaning is loosened so much as to be farcical and outright false.

And yet, there is light. And like the light in the natural world, I am praying that my new found light will grow. That it will strengthen and burgeon and prosper. But such a light as mine is more comforting than natural light, which ebbs and wanes. The light my heart holds will be maintained while my heart holds it. Only should my heart-light slip from its haven shall it ever cease to shine there. If it does slip, then my heart will not darken because the light has ceased to shine less brightly but because the light has moved away.

But, while it shines it is precious. While it shines, I will keep and guard it for the treasure it is.

by

A Remembrance

Yesterday would have been my father’s 67th birthday. He committed suicide when I was twelve. I’ve never been able to write remembrances for him on the actual anniversaries of his death or birthday. The pain is always nearest the day of these torturous occasions. But, it is my tradition to perform acts of remembrance around these dates. It mitigates the suffering I continue to endure.

This year, I want to share a memory. My father used to sing my sister and I to sleep to the accompaniment of his guitar. The song my sister never heard Daddy sing because she’d always fallen asleep by that time, he and I called “Our Lullaby.”

One night, I asked my father, “Daddy, when will I have someone to sing ‘Our Lullaby’ to?”

“I don’t know, Sweetheart.” He replied, “You have to find just the right person to sing it to, or the words won’t come out right. But, I know you’ll find him and when you do, don’t ever leave him.”

I gave him a hug and said, “When I find my song’s listener, I promise never to leave him.”

Not long after this exchange, Daddy stopped singing my sister and I to sleep. Scant months after that he was dead. I never heard my father’s lullaby again until one day I was shopping for music and found a Don McLean CD. As the CD played, it eventually came to a track called, “And I Love You So.” I’d found my long-lost lullaby.

Over two decades after my father’s death, I also found my listener. Though he doesn’t remember me singing to him (he was very nearly asleep already when I sang for him), I have played the track for him and told him the story. And, as I promised my father, I will never leave my beloved.

 

And I Love You So

by: Don McLean

 

And I love you so.

The people ask me how,

how I’ve lived ’til now.

I tell them I don’t know.

I guess they understand

how lonely life has been.

But, life began again

the day you took my hand.

And yes, I know how lonely life can be.

The shadows follow me

and the night won’t set me free.

But, I don’t let the evening get me down.

Now that you’re around me.

And you love me too.

Your thoughts are just for me.

You set my spirit free.

I’m happy that you do.

The book of life is brief

and once a page is read,

all but love is dead.

That is my belief.

And yes, I know how loveless life can be.

The shadows follow me

and the night won’t set me free.

But, I don’t let the evening bring me down.

Now that you’re around me.

And I love you so.

The people ask me how,

how I’ve lived ’til now.

I tell them…

I don’t know.