Grief is not a thing that can be held out at arm’s length, a box, detached and inert, upon which we gaze and ponder, unmoved. Grief is a hideous monster, a gremlin, an ogre, an alien with bugged-out eyes and a snarly smirk, reeking of death-eater poison and rot, attached to our skin, our minds …
The little redheaded girl next to me, probably about six or seven, had been watching me. I knew this because I could sense her bright blue eyes, full of questions, and the gentle puff of air generated against my skin by her long, straight hair when she swished it back and forth. “You didn’t color …
And here we are together again
Creeping separately into oldness
Manufactured pleasantries
Masking everlasting coldness
Madonna tossed in a tangle of trash
Tilted sideways, about to crash
Dangling the Christ Child near the edge
Losing all reason in her smelly bed
Warmth on my face
Yellow hues surround me
Streaming through a seeming window
Crisply framed in gleaming white.
He loved orange. Halloween orange and black, Houston Astros orange and blue, and his very own design of his auto parts store’s brand: Hazel & Alley orange with black-and-white accents.
Give me my trees For swings and things For upside-down dawdles Dizzies and dings Oh spare me the beach And the mountains of snow
If you look very closely you can see beyond the sorrow of Alzheimer’s to the unexpected gifts it offers.
When I received the notice of my upcoming fiftieth high school reunion, I had some soul-searching to do: Why would I go?
My grandmothers were as different as night and day. One was a classic cookie-baking grandma. The other was a hardworking, scrubbed-down country woman.
J Christopher Creatives © Copyright 2021. All Rights Reserved.
