rosieengel - Tumblr blog

[rosieengel]

Wild and wonderful hues-

The red, magenta, pink, blue-

Set the gorge on fire.

you're screaming in the car seat

And I would be a liar

If I didn't say I am grateful

to see another sunset with you

[rosieengel]

Surrender to this moment, the not-knowing, the in-between, the possibly, the least likely, the never-to-be, the illusion of control, who you were, oldsoul, who you thought you would be, what you dreamed, what you feared, The what-must-be-done, the path you're on, the path you didn't choose, the pain, the tears, the mistakes, what you've had to lose, the terrors, misjudgements, errors, all the things you carried, to letting go of holding too much, the holding back, hiding, the things you needed, the things you lack, the change, the beauty, the love, the unconditional, love, love, love...

[rosieengel]

the bay

things look clearer at dawn

from inside you

when your cold, murky water

shocks me to life.

for a moment,

I see you for how you really are:

slimy.

the novelty of a hazy summer morning,

juxtaposed against a chiseled, skyline, Greek Revival

makes me feel rotten from the inside out

you are a suitable friend to the decomposing globs

hanging from the safety ropes

floating

residents, quacking, reminding me-

how lucky we've got it.

[rosieengel]

coffee shop encounter 2

A daughter and her father amble into the coffee shop, walking to one table but settling on another. His steel-tipped cowboy boots and leather vest clash with the art on the wall (that even I could do). In a sea of laptops, his hand is over hers next to the morning bun. "It is good to see Momma, too, and she was glad to see you.""Was she wearing makeup?" "She always wears makeup in the nursing home, she doesn't want to look old!""I remember when she didn't wear makeup and she was very beautiful."

[rosieengel]

woke up early but slept late

sweet almond in my mouth

from the bear claw that i ate.

deep snow-divots

carved by geared, metal steeds

warm hands, toes, and fingers

homesick clowns, mournful sounds

of an over-sized viola still lingers.

i need... i need...

nothing.

but your socks don't have matches anymore.

[rosieengel]

My Single Haiku

two-wheeled trusty steed,

pedals fast, red leaves flying,

apt perch for autumn.

[rosieengel]

coffee shop encounter 3

I biked a little out of the way to a cafe that I like with a plan; I was going to read my new book and drink a latte. I walked in, ordered my drink for-here, and settled down in a rather secluded area of the place. My book wasn't in my bag! I didn't know what to do with myself. I always do things, hipsteremo or embarrassing things, in the coffee shops like...reading French, writing in my little moleskin, having a discussion about something or another. I decided that I would just stare into space. Or if an unsuspecting

person walked into my field of vision, they would be people-watched. I sipped my latte and looked at every piece of art I could spy. Then I stared at people using their laptops and the people who would walk by the window. I kept hoping that it would rain but there was no chance of that happening. I looked at my fingernails and analyzed the stains on my table. I crossed by legs and picked at the hairs I missed when I shaved. I noticed how poorly I had painted my little pinkytoe.

Then I was caught off-guard. A strange, coffee shop philosopher - could he be homeless?- Type appeared, seated, at the table across from me, on the other side of the room. He was staring right at me. I guess he didn't have anything to do either. I stared back. He was scraggly-bearded and had crystal-eyes. He had in front of him a laptop computer from 1999. (Did they make those back then?) It had a sticker on it that said "My Vote counts more than y'all's". I stared at all of it. Every single bit of it. He was doing the same. I didn't expect it, but I guess we really did have a lot in common.

[rosieengel]

dreams

your eyes scan back and forth behind your closed eyelids. what can you dream if you haven't experienced anything yet? do you dream less?

your red hair on my forearm, bluffs streaked with lead. i pull back the sweaty sheet and fall from the bed.

the heat originates from my hands or from a fire, smoking beyond the door. i can't see even though my eyes are open. what's more

i don't know this place.

your baby dreamt about you, even though she never saw your face. she died on Mother's Day and so did you. he wasn't far behind.

How can we be making bats sick?

[rosieengel]

Faceless pumpkins

The book was open as I wrote, my hand scribbling in the tiniest of scripts. You glanced at it and I let you read it only because you asked nicely, adamantly.

I didn't want you to but I gave it to you. It was part of my big plan to be real, to be genuine. You looked so surprised as you read, line after line:

STOP CRYING

STOP CRYING

STOP CRYING

but you should know that I drive down the roads of Iowa, past the Amish, past the alpaca, past the Jews, past the corn, past the Mississippi and I cry because I have missed so much.

I miss our pumpkins even if the squirrels ate their faces off.

[rosieengel]

yellow line yellow dashes

Yellow line yellow dashes time passes. The girls swing in the hammock   the boys play leapfrog by moonlight   and I braid pieces of hay into your long brown hair.

We play at being adults, sipping empty bottles of brandy, drawing blueprints to castles, writing poetry on the air with our breath. That is where our log cabin will go, you say as you point to the hill.

I stifle a laugh because I just tore my new jeans on the barbed wire fence and mostly because I will never live there. Swinging, the morning fog dissipates and with it the spirit of (what you think is) a Union soldier.  Your mom is in the closet, your dad is in the kitchen.  We put our ears against the door to listen  to the last, sweet notes of a swan song.

We will never be allowed to go into that room again.

[rosieengel]

Through my right ear on her left breast I confirm she is alive, the pulse slowing as the years go by still not knowing why that tempo in my chest is a steady forty beats per minute

feeling a heart beat next to mine must be a great thing but I like to think that I don't have one. I put the ring on the sink, trying to blur out the blue but every surge makes me catch my breath, adjusting to clear and true

little obsessions and repetitions disguise themselves on the mirror as uneven lines born of an increasing anxiety I do not know or care to know, so in the meantime I will eradicate every stray hair from my thoughts and my face.

Then you tore the store apart, looking for that pendant, el Corazon, some sort of tangible representation of what you lost: your heart. but you like to think that you don't have one.

[rosieengel]

Rome 2012

the stone cold against her right cheek,

her eyelids droop at the Roman sunset.

She is determined to stay here long enough

to hear the cannon fire across the hazy horizon at noon.

Maybe even longer than that (forever?)

if it means she can stay here with the two of them.

There is Castel Sant'Angelo,

over there Palatine Hill, he says, pointing.

but she just observes the shadows

passing over his young and aged face.

glass shatters below, pierced by the shrill laughter of youth.

her fingers cool, playing against her damp shirt

as she pulls it tight to her chest,

hoping to contain the writhing inside.

Last night she was baptized in the Campo Dei Fiori

and climbed here with them,

fountain water dripping from her hair

to the cobblestones behind her.

Here she will stay, planted in the earth of Janiculum

letting a puddle form around her.

Your trust will be crucified here,

This limp figure on the wall a testament to the river below,

always changing.

The water will always remain filthy and foggy,

but It's all the same to her hot, burning flesh.

[rosieengel]

An experiment

today I set out around the bay to make eye contact with everyone who came my way. this behavior is part of an overarching plan to at least appear more confident, but no one would help me in my self development. 9 out of every 10 people avoided looking at me. As we played chicken in the street, I stared at them, hoping that they would look up, give some glimmer of recognition or flash of a smile. but no! They would rather look at the ground. Or the ducks. Or the Coots. Like those things are going to give them anything meaningful. Maybe my smile would have temporarily dissolved their grimaces. I don't know why people have such pained looks on their faces. 

[rosieengel]

An elegy to a granola bar

I still haven't learned after several attempts to remedy a hang over with organic food. The water is already up to my ankles. damn this tub, perpetually clogged by my own hair. I will stand in my own vomit, I don't even care. he left me to lie naked shivering on the tiles and after a while she drove by, parked around the corner down the street, gave me a green monster, and her smile. then I gave it away because if it were not for you, where would I be? bashert, soul mates are windows into ourselves, showing us what we need to see. I was never that to you even though you were to me. I'm sorry.

[rosieengel]

A Little Life

Ruth froze, perched on the highest of limbs in the tallest of trees. Letting her thoughts wander, she found herself in a trance-like state, reflecting on her day and the growing pressure in her bladder.

She sat for a rather long period of time, watching the harvest sun set in the hazy heat. The redorange orb was a broken yolk in a sea of fuchsia and baby blue. Soon she will go hide in the barn's rafters and wait. All of the little kittens will emerge from their tomb of haybales and she, of course, shall pluck up the littlest. If the meek will eventually inherit the earth, I have to help at least one survive it, she mused.

Rapture loomed on the horizon, light glinting off an old dinosaur crawling across the field, reapingthreshingwinnowing. As she let their distant grumblings filter into her brain, a grain-fueled fire materialized in her mind's eye. A memory broke her train of thought, a memory of Nathan. He was on the ground below her, body outstretched, arms behind his head, blue eyes gazing upwards to the highest of limbs.

Just a moment before, she had kicked off her sandals in a fit of laughter, hoping they would fall on his head or somewhere else. "I could pee on you right now!" she spat out. Giving him a glare between her swinging legs, she was drawn to calloused and dirty feet. Picking at the edges of her rough skin, she was transported to the day when the three of them were brought in to her mother's house. Specks of static-charged hay drifted through the burning air. Nathan was deposited there like a lumpy tumor on the table.

For weeks she read to his bandages. She imagined herself a witch, brewing a potion, a magical salve that could grow porcelain skin from tears. Perhaps she could even utter a spell to bring his brothers back from the dead. It was here that she developed a habit of wondering if each day may be the last.

While she waited for him to get up from his bed of ennui (he didn't), she composed for him a masterpiece of contentment. She wrote of their very own hypothetical house brimming with the sound of three children giggling grandchildren, their second chance at being parents, green bean casseroles after church on Sundays with their families, timid caresses in the dark as the day faded away into approaching thunder. She wrote a complete, rather semi-charmed life for the two of them in a brown leather book that she buried at this very spot.

Through with being in the treetops, she grasped a branch and unbuttoned her blouse. Yanking her skirt from her hips, she let her clothes fly. Bracing herself against the old tree, she stood against its crunchy wall, filled her lungs with air and dove into his eyes below.

Every day is like a little life.

[rosieengel]

A discussion

veiling them, I squint my eyes

over my coffee cup as I explain how

four years ago I told strangers lies

because I had lost a sense of wonder about the world.

So here is one for you (and you're not a stranger anymore):

every night I would pray to God about my dilemmas

as I drifted off to sleep

and I'm not even religious anymore.

in secret, I wrote my thoughts in a Christian journal

answering questions like, "where did you encounter God today?"

you gape as the cranberry-almond scone in your mouth

tries to escape. Who are you?

I suddenly found myself falling asleep on books,

as I read the same vaguely familiar paragraph

over and over again.

Giving me a quizzical look,

you tightly scrunch the tiny muscle above your icy blue left eye

into a tight bunch.

Only later did it really dawn on me

when I was thousands of miles away from home

that I quickly forget the perils

associated with living for someone else.

You, the sometimes-knitter, became melancholy

because I told you that I have wasted too much time

doing nothing.

I want someone to tell me why

it is so hard for me to believe you, you say.

Not having any answers,

I respond that I am just not that person.

Ever since

an ache will sometimes radiate from

its origin underneath my belly button

that shoots through my veins then out my fingertips

because I trust you about as much as I trust myself.

(and that isn't a lot)

But I guess the future isn't so scary now,

knowing that the universe owes me one. or three.

[rosieengel]

Character #1 (edit 2)

As you build a character, you should be able to visualize them in your mind. Just like you, they make choices during the day and act on them (or don’t).

Your character wakes up before the sun, and begrudgingly, well before her alarm sounds. She puts on the same shirt she wore yesterday and stumbles down the hill to the barn, fearful of shadows that scurry through the field. She doesn’t play team (or even single) sports and she doesn’t do much for fun besides building and putting out fires. At night she sometimes listens to music, like Joni Mitchell or James Taylor, but only the first 30 seconds of each song because 1. she knows each song too well and 2. she is too restless. When she attends dinner parties (she is invited often, but typically declines) it appears as if she eats very little, although in reality, she is eating a lot and hiding it from you - In her right pocket is a cherry pit, in her left pocket a key to a door. Instead of being so perilously afraid of what’s behind the door, she should be more aware of what is in the room with her.