Begin With a Breath...

Writing scraps by Stephanie Victoire, author of "The Other World, It Whispers".Words tumble onto pages as they come. Prose, poem, story or thought, all escaping dark corners where dreams attempt to live on and feeling persists to dwell.  (All original work is copyrighted by the author and tagged with "Stephanie Victoire")

[approvers]

[beginwithabreath]

Whole/Cracked

She forces herself to feel more whole in what is broken. Breathes deeply into cracks of old, rotted planks. Sings down into shipwrecks for the ocean to hear; tells herself bedtime stories on uncoiled, jagged springs. 

[melisica]

Elsa Bleda

[beginwithabreath]

Collect Yourself

Collect yourself in moments when

heavy doors close, in stairwells 

shadowed with absence, lit by quiet.

Slickened grounds make more of themselves

with your tears.

---------------------------------------------------

You gather up inside you

droplets of you, names

bounce back from graphite walls

licks the chalk off brick,

swell you fatter and you

think of clouds you’d like to roll

over in, turning your face downwards.

[milamai]

Ulalume

[beginwithabreath]

Oat Moon

I am tight in my shoulders

as I stand, hunched over

with my hands in the grains making myself

things that make me better.

Wishes go into spooned mixtures

thickening to thin.

------------------------------------------------

Super bright and golden, gives a streak

of safety through the closed window,

shoulders still forward and working

to take single things and turn them into

one whole.

[praying]

[beginwithabreath]

It’s Always About Listening

If I could change the way I am with you, I’d change the way I am towards me too. If you could hear me under the water, I wouldn’t allow myself to drown. Don’t listen to the jester, don’t listen to the martyr. 

[dame-de-pique]

Comet photographed by John Grigg

John Grigg (1838-1920) was a keen amateur astronomer based in Thames, Coromandel. He discovered or co-discovered three comets in the first decade of the 20th century. He was a pioneer of astrophotography, and took these photographs of a comet in May 1901.

[1st-1]

[beginwithabreath]

To the Void

Toes curling over the edge to stop a tumble, to put a halt to the loss of control, the fast fall, the limbs twisting this way and that - thrown in directions she cannot plan. She holds back the child in her who looks into the void that sits beneath the edge, who thinks there may be something down there that glows in the dark. 

[persseida]

we’re nowhere and it’s now par betulvargun

[beginwithabreath]

A hand

I watched how you soothed him, how you placed a hand on top of his, reached for it first on his thigh where it wasn’t. You searched with reflex at a word that years have taught you might unravel him. A word that was said to illustrate another’s story, one very different from his own, but the word had a sameness in its history, resounding in his quick heartbeat and stuck throat.

I noticed this gesture and thought, if only a person could do the same for me, catch the word for me, put out a hand and take away its impact and weight. I wonder if there could be many hands to reach for me as I shrink away, for there are many words: abuse, anxiety, shame, family, friendship, love.

[creativityofchaos]

Music speaks.

[beginwithabreath]

Record Store

I still wear my old and worn bras so I can buy songs. The parts of me that need fixing, remain beneath - unseen, but stitched together temporarily, by voices braver and sweeter than my own.

I feel cheap in some ways and rich in others. Sloppy nail polish and eyes that need more than shadow and lashes. But I know a truth when I hear one, and I need nothing more than that. 

[ctrl---z]

[beginwithabreath]

It’s time to redecorate the space I once made for writing. 

[maxkirin]

If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.

Richard Rhodes (via maxkirin)