writingat3inthemorning

[writingat3inthemorning]

It’s wild when you as a writer reach a level where you have your own PERSONAL collection of short stories, scenes, and even books to read in your Google docs.

Like… I have my own library now. The only author is me. Are these self-indulgent? 100%. That’s why I love them so much. They’re tailored just for meeeee

[writingat3inthemorning]

Honestly, I feel like nobody cares about my writing anymore. I'm currently very close to finishing the first draft of a trilogy. I started the journey with a small but passionate group of supporters and, most importantly, my sister as my number one fan.

I've kinda been reduced to a one man army.

But, you know what? Nobody caring doesn't hurt nearly as much as giving up would. So I'll keep writing, keep screaming into this void of social media and that empty word document. Maybe one day, I'll make a connection.

Can you hear the echoes? Because I'm still going.

[writingat3inthemorning]

The Silent Valley

(Original work, 1500 words. No TW. Just felt wistful one day I guess.)

It’s always just been her. Alone, with her faithful dog Skye. For a while—a mere fleeting moment in time, in hindsight—she thought it didn’t have to be. That the trial of loneliness would be at last over. But now she knew better. 

Thunder booms overhead, rain pelts down—on the tin roof, on the cracked concrete walkway, on poor soaked Skye, on her. She throws her leather bag recklessly over one shoulder, not bothering to look back at the dark house. The empty, hollow shell, the warm glow of fire and laughter forever gone from its windows. 

Skye shakes, spraying water all over her. She pulls her hood over her head and picks up the gas lamp, holding it up like a beacon in the darkness. Rain streams down the dirty glass. “Down, Skye. Down. Let’s go.”

Skye looks up at her, confusion in her warm amber eyes. Why aren’t we waiting for Him?

“He’s not coming back, Skye.” Her traitorous voice cracks, just a little. “There’s… nothing left for us here.”

They walk down the concrete pathway together. Lightning flashes, illuminates the stormy sky. The rain conceals the tear tracks on her face. 

August 21, 20— I haven’t seen another person in two hundred days. The purge must have taken them all out. It’s eerie. Skye and I walked through farmland today, and all the equipment was left out on the fields. Tractors, plowers, cars left stranded in the middle of the road. The birds continue singing, rats make their homes in the insulation of the homes we scavenged from. Weeds overtake the fields. Nature is taking back her land.  As I’m writing this, coyotes howl outside the window. Skye is nervous. She keeps pacing. I still have to comb those burrs out of her tail, but I’m so tired. I’ll do it tomorrow.  I miss Mom and Dad. I miss Ellie. I wish I could see them again.

They reach the ocean. Powerful waves rip at the sandy shores, seagulls call to each other over the whipping cold winds. Skye splashes around in the water, grinning doggishly, chasing the birds. She doesn’t bother to call her back. 

The vehicles on the old roads are all rusty. Something peeks out of the sand—a child’s toy bucket, faded light blue and yellow from the sun. She picks it up, dusting it off, and reminisces of the old days. But it’s fragile, and it crumbles under her grip. 

In the distance, an abandoned playground stands, paint peeling and the swings squeaking as the wind pushes them back and forth. Sand has already covered the first steps of the metal stairs, the base of the see-saw. A pair of converses hangs by its laces from the monkey bars, crumbling and stained and old. 

Skye runs up to her, panting. The black fur around her eyes has started to grey. She looks up at her, tail wagging eagerly, as if to ask, Can we stay here?

She shakes her head. “Not here, Skye.” Looks up, at the few boats still left bobbing on the docks, the old beach towel crumpled on the side of a building, the ghost town still standing behind her, empty and hollow and cold. “Not here.”

October 25, 20— I met Him today. I won’t write his name down. I’m scared that if I do, he’ll disappear, and that this would all be a dream. But you shall know who I’m talking about.  I forgot how wonderful someone’s laugh can be. 

They avoid the cities. Not for fear of people, but rather the lack of it. The loneliness presses down on her like a shroud, eats at her sanity like moths. 

She’d finally brushed the new wave of burrs out of Skye’s tail. It wags now, fluffy and free, as she prances up and down the banks of the creek, perhaps remembering her puppyhood.  

The trees are starting to golden again. She looks up as the wind blows, rustling the branches. A russet leaf gently floats down, spinning through the air in arcs before landing in her waiting hand. The cool air smells of brown leaves, of pine carpets, of bubbling streams and the coming cold weather.

“Not here,” she tells Skye. 

As if she couldn’t hear her, Skye continues to frolic up and down the banks. Above them, a flock of geese flies southward, arranged in a perfect V. 

January 4, 20— The first lingering snow arrived today. He convinced me to build a snowman with him. Skye kept stealing the poor snowman’s arms, but he brought more.  We broke open his stash of old marshmallows and roasted some over the fire. They tasted a little stale, but it brought back so many memories—of camping trips, of Christmas day.  I told him how I missed Ellie. He smiled (oh, that smile), a little sadly, and said that he, too, had a sister. Once.  

Winter comes, harsh and biting. She shivers, cold despite all the layers she’s wearing. Skye appears unbothered, snow coating her white-and-black fur, and trots ahead of her in the snow-covered meadows. In the treeline, a group of deer look up, ears twitching and alert, black eyes curious. They watch her, unafraid. No animal is afraid of mankind any longer. 

Skye barks, bursting out onto a hill in a shower of snow, and they bolt, running gracefully back into the forest. Skye turns around and looks at her, panting, as if asking, Aren’t you proud of me?

Despite herself, she smiles. “C’mere, Skye.”

Skye trots back, tongue lolling. The snow and wind has already started to erase their footprints. 

March 29, 20--  We fought today. He wants to explore; he still thinks there’s people out there. Perhaps there is, but I don’t want to know. He thinks I’m scared. I suppose I am—after seeing the empty skyscrapers, the dusty streets, the plagu I know he won’t leave me, but part of me wonders if he’ll be  happier if he does. I fear he wonders the same. 

April 4, 20-- He left. 

It’s spring when she returns to the valley and sees the cabin again. It’s old, dilapidated from a year of lacking maintenance, but unexpected warmth still springs in her heart at the sight of its dirty windows. The pathway is riddled with deep puddles and the rain leaks through holes in the metal roof, but there’s still an eagerness in her step as she pulls the squeaky door open. She almost laughs. Her unwashed cup still rests on the old wooden table, dirty with a year’s worth of grime coating its sides. 

A small, sputtering fire is started in the stove, fuelled with the firewood she carried on her back. The cup is washed and put away, the dry section of floor is swept. Skye, tired and limping from stepping in a thornbush, curls up on an old rat-gnawed blanket she pulls from the old storage closet. 

“Here, Skye,” she murmurs. “Right here.”

She sits on an old stool (his stool) before the fire, warming up her hands. Her gas lamp sits next to the fire, finally extinguished, for the fire in the stove is enough light for her tonight. Water drips from the ceiling into an old pot with a steady plink, plink, plink. Her tired feet finally rest without the anticipation of more walking when morning comes, for this is her home. This is where she will rebuild. This is where she will heal. And this is where she will learn to forgive. 

She rebuilds the cabin, fixes up the leaky roof. She is in no hurry. Summer comes again with its colourful wildflowers and chickadees that wake her up at dawn, fall with its deep golden colors, winter with its chill and silent beauty. The years pass by, each one faster than the last. Skye passes away from old age, and she is lonely, terribly lonely. Sometimes when she hunts the deer that no longer fear, she wishes she were one of them—cold, hungry, but not lonely. Never lonely. Perhaps she should leave again, seek out more of mankind. But, like a warm, glowing ember that warms her even on the coldest of days, assurance burns in her heart. She must stay. 

Five years pass, ten, fifteen. She sings to herself, speaks her thoughts out loud to the wind for the birds and squirrels to answer.  She dances in the kitchen to the wind’s melody, waltzes with the warm flickering shadows cast by the fire. It helps with the burden of solitude. And she waits. 

It’s raining again, just like that fateful day sixteen years ago. The stove is shut, a kettle singing happily on top of it. She sits next to the repaired shuttered window, whittling a spile from pale maple wood, listening to the wind and the rain. Without Skye, her hearing has become keen, and her hands pause. 

He doesn’t knock—he pushes the door open, his limbs heavy with deep exhaustion, his clothes drenched. He’s grown older, a thick black beard streaked with the first hints of grey. In his arms, cradled underneath his jacket, is a small child of barely around four, sleeping soundly against his chest. He lifts his eyes to hers, and they’re heavy and brimming from sixteen years worth of guilt, adventure, and hope. 

She smiles. “Hello, stranger.”

[writingat3inthemorning]

I Lost My Talk - A Child's Plight

ID: An image of Shubenacadie school

Frankly, I don’t know where to begin. Essays, stories, they come easily to me. Putting argument or imagery down on paper feels like child’s play compared to this, for this is to convey my soul. That’s what poetry is, isn’t it? Poetry is the connection of souls, across time and thought and culture.

What is voice? A child could answer. Your voice is what you use when you talk, of course. But what is talk? And what happens when you lose it?

Let’s take a look at this poem:

I LOST MY TALK – Rita Joe

I lost my talk

The talk you took away

When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:

I speak like you

I think like you

I create like you

The scrambled ballad, about my word.

Two ways I talk

Both ways I say,

Your way is more powerful.

So gently I offer my hand and ask,

Let me find my talk

So I can teach you about me.

Perhaps a child could answer that question. Perhaps too many could. But only a few have put it into words, and thus there are only a few windows through which we can look. If you skipped the poem, read it. I don’t think it’s possible to convey, with so many words, what Rita Joe conveys in so few. Should I attempt, I know I’ll only ruin it. Thus, you must read it.

Look at the title: “I Lost My Talk.” You can almost hear the child’s whimper, almost see the hands clutched to her chest. The phrasing is mournful, short with a childlike simplicity. It’s an epigram—it sketches out the atmosphere of the poem, even before it begins. Taste these sentences again: “I speak like you/I think like you/I create like you.” She uses parallelism, both in sentence structure and repetition. By repeating the word “like”, she also creates repetition. She speaks, she thinks, and she creates—Rita Joe uses these things to identify herself as a fellow human in a synecdoche. “Two ways I talk/Both ways I say/Your way is more powerful.” Here we see parallelism in structure again, as well as repetition by the repetition of “way”. “Way” in this case is a metaphor for a way of life. Rita Joe has learned the hard way that it is the white man’s path that holds the most influence, a tragedy and unfairness that she now presents before us. In addition, the First Nations would pass on their culture and wisdom through ballads and by word of mouth. Thus, the “scrambled ballad” in the poem is a symbol of the author’s culture and how it was lost.  “Shubenacadie school” gives us an allusion to a residential school and the horrors experienced within. Thus, we can conclude that the people the author speaks to in an apostrophe are her absent abusers, or at least those who inherited their legacy. Finally, “offer my hand” holds connotations for reconciliation, peace, and forgiveness.

The poem itself is simple, without a rhyming or syllable scheme. It is written in free verse with a scattering of iambic phrases, such as “I lost my TALK” and “The talk you took AWAY” (emphasis added). The phrases are short, the words arranged in almost a song-like way, like the ballad mentioned in the poem. The author uses enjambment: “Let me find my talk/So I can teach you about me.” The use of enjambment emphasizes talk and connects the two; she wants to find her talk, her culture, not only for herself, but to share. The simple structure and the connotations of her word choice reminds the reader of the little girl that was snatched away from her family and plunged into a harsh and unforgiving place that cared not about her wellbeing. Does not your heart ache for this lost childhood? Mine certainly did.

But what is this poem about, besides mourning a lost childhood, a forgotten history? We find the answer in the last few stanzas. “So gently I offer my hand and ask/Let me find my talk/So I can teach you about me.” In these few words we find the poem’s theme of grace, forgiveness, and hope for reconciliation. After all, the first step towards peace is to understand one another, and how can they understand if nobody explains? We see the little girl, now a woman, surveying the ashes of her people and yet not growing bitter from them, but offering her hand to her absent abusers. Thus, the primary theme is solidified as loss and forgiveness, segregation and reconciliation. We see this reflected in the title: “I Lost My Talk.” Her voice isn’t angry, or vengeful, but mourning, and in the poem’s flow, we see her hope.

This is my favorite line: “The scrambled ballad, about my word.” As I mentioned before, ballads were used to pass on culture and history. “Word” here seems to be a metaphor for her culture and history. The author lost her heritage—not because it was completely gone, but because it was scrambled, muddled, made unwhole. I love it because it’s simple, it’s meaning half-hidden but rich. It shapes the poem. It builds its meaning. I wish I could ask Rita Joe if she ever felt like she got her culture back. Did she ever un-scramble that ballad? Perhaps she managed to find a person who could decipher the words and make them understandable again. Perhaps the plight of the lost child isn’t permanent for them all.

We see Rita Joe’s resilience all the more when we consider what Shubenacadie School really was. It was the only residential school established in the Maritimes, and from the day it opened it had issues with bad construction, terrible maintenance, and overcrowding. Children operating laundry and kitchen equipment led to some of them having serious injuries. In 1934, there was even a federal inquiry after nineteen boys were flogged until they scarred permanently. The judge in charge of the inquiry dismissed it, as “they got what they deserved.” (NCTR, n.d.) This was the place Rita Joe endured. This was the place where Rita Joe’s voice was snatched away. And, isn’t she one of thousands? Though she may have regained her voice, many never did.

Rita Joe was a little girl, once. She mentions this in her poem. It makes us wonder about the psychological impact this whole ordeal had on her. Did she struggle with anger? Did she struggle with fear? Though we see no evidence for the former, it does not mean that it didn’t happen. As for the latter, we may ask: why wouldn’t she struggle with fear? Perhaps she continued to have lasting psychological trauma, her mind locking her once more, perhaps even decades later, in the fear of a little girl. The violent words she uses, such as “lost”, “snatched,” and the begging cadence of the second paragraph may hint at such scars.

In identifying herself as once being a little girl, Rita Joe also draws attention to her gender. However, gender doesn’t really play a big role in the poem as a whole. One could even argue that it would be easy to change the words from “little girl” to “little boy” without changing the meaning or theme. However, it is worthy to note that as an indigenous woman, Rita Joe would have been vulnerable in ways she wouldn’t have been as male. In addition, the gentleness portrayed would typically be attributed easier to women than to men, as males would archetypically be portrayed as more vengeful, though this is not universal. Ultimately, we see from the other lines of the poem that it is not about man contesting with woman, but rather the unfortunately common archetype of human against human, race against race, First Nations against white, and so on. And thus, in leading us through this archetype, Rita Joe guides us to the conclusion that we’re not different after all.

Rita Joe learned to survive in the harsh world she was plunged into: “Two ways I talk/Both ways I say/Your way is more powerful.” Given her race as First Nations and her reference to Shubenacadie school, her childhood background could be assumed to be poverty or working-class. A quick Google search shows that to be true: she was an orphan by the age of ten and was forced into foster care (The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2017). She had no power, no money, a despised as a woman and despised as a First Nations survivor. But she held on to her identity as a human and didn’t let them dehumanize her: “I speak like you/I think like you/I create like you.” Throughout history, vengeance was considered a trait of resilience, but here we see true resilience in her forgiveness: “So I gently offer my hand and ask/Let me find my talk/So I can teach you about me.”

Poetry is timeless, and this one, with its message of a scrambled culture, the evils of racism, and hope of reconciliation is no different. Maybe, like me, you sometimes feel like the people of long ago were very different from us. But that is a lie—we all speak, we all think, we all create. In putting her story into words, Rita Joe reminds us that their plight is still relevant, and that they still matter.

To learn more:

Rita Joe – 1932-2007

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Sources

CBC. (n.d.) The Shubenacadie residential school operated from 1930 to 1967. [Image] Retrieved December 6, 2024, from https://i.cbc.ca/1.6047377.1687271321!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_1180/the-shubenacadie-residential-school-operated-from-1929-to-1967.jpg

Joe, R. (2007). I Lost My Talk. Poetry in Voice. Retrieved May 3, 2022, from https://www.poetryinvoice.com/poems/i-lost-my-talk

National Arts Centre. (2024). Rita Joe, C.M. [Image] Retrieved October 31, 2024, from https://nac-cna.ca/en/bio/rita-joe

National Center for Truth and Reconciliation. (n.d.) Shubenacadie (St. Anne’s Convent) Retrieved November 15, 2024, from https://nctr.ca/residential-schools/atlantic/shubenacadie-st-annes-convent/

The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2017). Rita Joe. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 31, 2024, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rita-joe