Grammy Porter

It was not just camera shyness, my grandmother always held her hands together against her body. I, too, walk that way. It was second nature. I think she needed to hold herself back. Otherwise, like I do, she would erupt in smiles and mouth covering giggles again and again and again. It's embedded in me.
I think she stitched something different into each of her 14 children and grandchildren that many times doubled. I, the sixth to last grandchild and fifth to last girl, got her hair, her dance, and her love of Scrabble.
Even at 80, her hair was never gray. It was brown and soft; it permed loosely at an iron's touch. I loved my grandmother's hair. She once held my own back as I spewed hot dog guts into her kitchen sink. I might have been four when I first fell for love.
My grandmother was endless Scrabble games with butter cookies. They were always homemade. Wobbly arms, once young and muscled now aged with the love of so many children, would press fork prongs and sprinkle colored sugar into the dough. Nobody has since done the same. She always as the best.
Not even my parents could beat Grammy in scrabble. Was I too young to challenge her words? Perhaps, I was not old enough to know the right words. No, I think she was just that wordy.
I have inherited my hair and impromptu dance skills from my grandmother. I have seen them age over twenty years of eight millimeter film and the fourteen years I knew her. Maybe I'll learn to play scrabble like her, someday.

Euneirophrenia

Hearts may wish in dreams,

But it is up to our heads

to act upon them.

I've Become

I have permanently bent big toes
from shoving them deep
into the shallowest of shoes.
I've always refused to grow up
even as I grew.

I've become my words
more often than my face
because I hear they speak better
than myself.

I search for knowledge
because
I've forgotten all the lessons
I was taught
when I was little.

I talk to strangers
because
they fascinate me,
and I like to hear their stories.

Anyway

I am someone
because
I've been before
and experience is a masterful artist.

Fifty-Five Fiction

Raphael
I was a Sunday before a big test. What was she to do, but sneak her art history notes into her bible. God would forgive, she was study his works, wasn't she? By the end of mass, the sleep deprived Ethna was snoring in the pew. The priest walked over, "Ah, a Last Judgment".

The Great Marker Incident

I still can't taste cheeseburgers on sesame seed buns without also tasting the concentrated chemicals that compose a certain Smelly's Blue Raspberry (Washable) Marker. Without realizing it, I once ate the tip off such a marker. Doing so warded off all future cravings of cheeseburgers. The worst part, it didn't even taste like raspberry.

Words on His-Story

When I think about words coming together to form a story, I wonder why our society doesn't congregate the same way. Lines of prose don't bicker over who begins a paragraph, because every point on the plot-line is equal. It's not about punctuation. It's never been about individualized verbs. There is only one standard held high above history's head; it's that nobody gets to spotlight on the cover.

Dive into Prose

Books and I are in a rough relationship. I read daily. I read because books are there, and that, my friend, is the devil. Reading is my ultimate temptation.