realityrains

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

“When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls.”

— Ted Grant

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

Part 2

It was then, and only then that she saw his deep seated wrinkles under his eyes and in the furrows on his brow and those intriguing blue eyes had gold specks and underneath you could see that had literally caught his tears as they fell from those eyes. The eyes with the ever so tiniest of a twinkle looked like they had so many stories to tell, with sunken shadows the same ones that had caught his tears as they fell from his sad blue eyes, eyes as blue as the weathered patched blue jeans he wore every day.

She politely asked if he would like her to sit with him and he nodded humbly. Once she had sacked down in the weathered booth, He looked up at her and asked if she would say a prayer with him; in that moment she tried to swallow but there was A big knot in her throat, she managed to respond “of course”. She had never really prayed out loud since she was supposed to be seen and not heard, so she tried to think of how her daddy had prayed and just closed her eyes and let whatever was gonna come out come out.

“ Our heavenly father, we thank you for this chance to bow our heads and reach out to you to send you our prayers. We pray that you receive” she stopped and she stuttered as she didn’t know his wife’s name. Fortunately, he understood her pause and shortness of breath and with a shaky voice said her name out loud so she could keep going. She took a slight breath then, although it seemed hard to breathe at that point because she could feel the tears starting to well in her eyes.

“ We ask you our most gracious heavenly father that you receive Dorthula in your arms and keep her safe until Henry can join her. We also ask that you place a hedge of protection around his family as they go through this grieving period. Thank you, heavenly father in your name. Amen.”

She kept her head, bowed with her eyes open, so she could see when he raised his head so as to be respectful and reached across the table and took his hand and thanked him for letting her be a part of something so precious and meaningful.

It was in that precise moment she realized, that only broken people can truly fix other broken people.

[realityrains]

Part 1

She has a saved worn and tattered shoebox full of poetry and important notes she collected over the years, The same shoebox that her black and white saddle shoes came in when she was 12 yrs old.

She wanted to be like Emily Dickinson, so she started adding little notes and thoughts to the now faded and stained box. Happy notes, sad notes, poetry, notes and silly words, and phrases; all written on scraps of paper, some were the backs of receipts, even church collection envelopes and back pages of books that were blank that nobody would miss.

The scraps of paper were her way of being heard and not seen, which was in its own right, ironic, since she grew up being told to be seen and not heard.

There’s a poem she wrote when her three year-old nephew was killed by a drunk driver as he chased a ball into the road.

And then the one written to the boy, she had desperately wanted to be her lover, but that was literally a pipe dream as he was substantially older than her. He was drafted and sent to the hell holes of Vietnam never to return.

Then there was the stained piece of brown roller style paper-towel sheet that housed faded scribbles that she had written on it as a runaway sleeping in the Trailways bathroom in Seattle.

And then there’s the note written on a waitress tablet page, that she wrote with a crooked smile about the man that always came in for his mid day meal carrying his own hot sauce. His order never changed, fried chicken, Black Eyed Peas and fried okra and doused it all with his hot sauce, she never bothered to ask what was so special about his hot sauce, she didn’t want to offend him in anyway ; she later wished she had. Since she had grown silenced at every turn growing up, she didn’t want to intrude on his quiet solitude. Now she feels that you should always ask people what is so special about something in an intriguing way. However, she did ask him one day why he changed his order from fried okra to corn on the cob, and he politely replied that his wife had been trying to get him to change his diet for years and since he buried her that day, he decided it was about time to start.

——— to be cont’d in Part 2

[realityrains]

Telescope

by Louise Glück

There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are because you’ve been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You’ve stopped being here in the world. You’re in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning.

You’re not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Then you’re in the world again. At night, on a cold hill, taking the telescope apart.

You realize afterward not that the image is false but the relation is false.

You see again how far away each thing is from every other thing.

[realityrains]

Personal

by Tony Hoagland

Don’t take it personal, they said; but I did, I took it all quite personal —

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields; the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain — And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy, the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father, with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom, with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard; barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else to take it personal too.

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

[realityrains]

“I’m still learning to love the parts of me that no one claps for.”

— Rudy Francisco

[realityrains]

Thank you @chaoticmusiccollectors and everyone who got me to 50 reblogs!

[realityrains]

Grace

[realityrains]