creative writing blog

tend to the roots of your imagination; there's much to sprout about.

[pauliflower-blog]

I wrote this 2 years ago

A Response to Chris Abani's Article:

Chris Abani's article consisted of many concepts I agreed with and or felt strongly about.

I loved how he not only attempted to provide us with an explanation for writing and it's purpose, he also threw in a couple quotes by other writers and included intriguing excerpts about a boy whom I wish I could have given a hug. I wondered if that boy was Abani, and I reflected on how amazing it is that it can never really be known how true a piece of writing is, if it is meant to be true, because writing gives us the freedom to twist words around and heighten or diminish details, therefore influencing how an audience may interpret it.

Yet although I spent most of my time being captivated by those pieces, I found myself coming back to this quote while reading his article:

"This is something writers and artists have always known because the truth of course is that we can never feel each others’ pain, but only approach it by relating it in degrees to our own."

I write when I'm in pain; it helps me cope, helps me understand it. Writing helps me get through any kind of pain I experience in my life. I've found that I write when I'm in love or experience emotions similar to this complex feeling, but I write most when I'm heartbroken, when I can't fathom how someone else's words or lack thereof could affect me so strongly, so substantially. Abani's quote about how we can't completely communicate to another person the degree of our pain through writing really strikes me. We could throw as much sensory detail and try our best to depict and recreate what's going on inside of us in those moments, but when it comes down to it: when you read about my pain, you'll mostly be thinking of yours.

[pauliflower-blog]

The Readings of Love by Osho

Because of my unique, slightly unstable upbringing, and quite lonely (and unlonely at the same time, if that makes sense) childhood, I think that is why I feel so at home with love. Why I know that I have been love. Why I am home for love, and the journey all the same.

I have known unlove ever since I was brought into this world. Trauma, but not inflicted towards me. Trauma in the family. Trauma present in my first socialization with others. Trauma in the air–shoving and forcing giant spoonfulls of food into little children’s mouths, slapping and screaming and crying, never involving me, though.

Stillness and peace with my father as a juxtaposition. A quiet, tender love that looks gently over me like leaves swaying off of trees. My mother–a stranger. She is vast like rolling hills, but dewey and reflecting sunlight like she’s meant to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I open my eyes in the middle of sleep one night, one of my first memories, to grass-colored eyes. Hers. The contacts she always used to wear. I hadn’t seen her before or known where she had been, but I knew we belonged to each other the moment she smiled down at me, fuzzy. I was four.

An unconditional love had been fostering within me during her absence. My mind flashes to our shared room all of a sudden so far and so different, away from my life of before. We sleep on a queen sized bed, and I am scared to sleep alone, but she leaves on the weekends to sleep elsewhere. At night before bed, she talks to me about how everyone is connected. How everything happens for a reason–the people we meet, what we go through, it will all seem intentional because it is, it’s meant to. I gift my mom a deep red velvet long sleeve for her birthday one year, I am still young and it is the first present I didn’t make with my hands. What pulled me to believe it was made for her when I saw it, pushed it away from her even after she said she loved it. Down to the bottom-most drawer, tucked away into the darkest part. A day passed and she didn’t have it on. It wasn’t appropriate for work; I waited, heart breaking every next day she didn’t wear it. The unconditional love that had nestled itself within me melted, then evaporated up to my tear ducts, where they then slid down my face. I wiped them with my sleeves, they seeped back into my skin. I loved her, still, every morning, and even at night that love was always kept between us, like the weekends that went by without her around. I knew that my mother had a life, a mind, a heart outside the two of us. Separate. I knew it before morning came, before grassy eyes and that fuzzy smile. She was all around me, and everywhere else, because she had to, like rolling hills.

There was a mud patch on her side and my little footprints were embedded in the soil. She never made a move to wipe them off. She was there, and wasn’t all the same. There was always more to her. I didn’t dare leave too much of a trail.

[pauliflower-blog]

Final Poetry Portfolio Spring 2016

From my past semester of English 570 aka Techniques of Poetry.

We wrote various poems, different forms, workshopped each others’ work and it was a blast. I learned about meter, the intention with each line, as well as other sonic patternings!

The portfolio was required to be comprised of 3 extensively revised poems already submitted in class (which I only revised about once for each poem… don’t tell my professor lol), and one new poem (which I am actually very proud of).

Without further ado (In the order I have written them):

Coalesce

Can we be much more fluid, like a silver night swaying over pinkish hues? Do a headstand on the sky. Notice how it looks at you blending with its endless view.

—-

Sonnet: Shallow Diving

The waves are my blood without oxygen, crashing against my heart, mesmerizing up and into the skyline, quivering. I never thought I’d feel this way again, didn’t realize butterflies can swim, run, up my spine into new horizons and create exhalation so vibrant. I thought the chances of drowning were slim, but I’m submerged under waves I can’t surf. And I’ve dedicated air to learning about a you who bleeds red and blue, plunging into fluid feelings of hurt. Skin grazing the jagged seafloor, yearning to come up for breath once more, I sink in you.

—-

Collage Found Poem: Not Tonight (Lines from E.E. Cummings and Pablo Neruda)

My Terra, constantly dancing, spinning, why do you wobble the night around you? I don’t know days you can turn to disarray but you shake the stars from their always

Maybe

because you have loved me moon and sunset stars and flowers glow, grow, in me and you I feel you keep going, luminous against a soundless reassurance so

someday

the dark matters could fade to a light blue I like it when you break through these wavelengths as if you were on fire from within The moon lives in the lining of your skin

I

try not to notice oceans you’ve drowned in I wish to run my fingers through your air but their impacts, like comets, race instead along your surface already jagged

Will

My vastness, to recognize these crashes hallucinate a space that reminds me this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart: I’ll carry your heart for light years

—-

Terza Rima: Static (New Poem)

When a room stills and settles upon dry, untouched objects, dust collects. Shameless nestles

against the both of our necks dissolve among burning memories, consumed wholly by heart-wreck.

Uninhabited rooms of you and me shying away from each other, creating distance without feet.

Two quiet, neglected lovers wishing to gently caress everywhere the dust will cover

don’t acknowledge their rooms a mess. Spreading stillness like it’s for the best.

—-

I probably could have spent more time on these, but I feel like I work better under pressure. But damn, imagine what I could accomplish with much more time on my hands (me speaking to myself, in hopes of motivating me to drop my horrid habit of procrastinating and waiting until the last minute).

The portfolio was due at 7 pm on Friday, May 20th.

I literally started writing my new poem in my notes on my phone at around 4 pm, as my dad and fam and I were coming out of the movie theaters after watching the new Angry Birds movie lol. We got home around 5 pm and I went straight to my laptop, scrambled to finish, and turned it in late…. (7:30 ish).

I still got an A- in the class though. But yes, I admit mistakes were made.

What can I say? You live and you learn.

[pauliflower-blog]

Reality doesn't fit into words. Reality strikes you dumb. Everything that happens in life is beyond words.

The Light and the Dark (Shiskin)