Learning to write in full sentences

A rupture can be so liberating. Creating a shift that starts things moving. Because I am slow to change,  the movement is so gradual that when it finally happens, I am not really sure about it. An inner shift that takes me by surprise.  But, something has indeed changed.

All the wounded animals gather to howl.  It does sound tempting. When you start with words, you never know what is going to come out.  I try to remember things that have eluded me for decades. Encrusted, but not embittered, I dig, looking for those words. But, the unsaid accumulates, echoing in these vaulted chambers.  Talking does not constitute the unsaid. Because it is not the same. The unsaid weighs more heavily than any subtext. So maybe howling is best. It can't define you.

Call me Dr. Stockmann. Pointing out the obvious and parceling it out. I examine it and decide how to move with it. You need less as you age. Each word a way forward. Put them together and then, maybe, those sentences will come flying at me. Fully formed. Elegant. Flowing.

Two Stranded Polar Bears

An ice floe. On it, two stranded polar bears. Having grown up in poverty, they constructed their lives on the premise of disbelief. Knowing from the start that it wasn't theirs to begin with. It wouldn't last.  Just something borrowed and definitely new. And yes, there was plenty of old and the only thing that was blue was the feeling left to their children. But that marriage lasted and lasted. Just the two of them, even with everyone and everything they amassed drifting in and out. Deaf to the anger they engendered. Outliving friends, relatives, not to mention their childrens' marriages.

One retreats, the other wavers. Together they wave goodbye. They drift. Two halves of an imperfection that endured wars, pestilence and the occasional indulgence. What will life be without them?