Practice Makes Permanent

January 26, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

“This is a lot of stuff to remember, Grandma!” Seven-year-old Sloane and I are making a Zentangle. She’d tried to copy my work on her own with no success, so I’m teaching her step by step. “That’s why we keep practicing.” “Practice makes permanent!” “Do you mean perfect?” “No permanent. That’s what my teacher says.” […]

V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #80: habit

January 20, 2020.Reading time 3 minutes.

“Be careful of the habits you make,” my father used to lecture, cigarette in one hand, whiskey in the other. “They will either make of you a slave or a master.” Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about, and I hated that his sermons were always: “Do what I say, not […]

Facades

Somehow I knew his mask was porcelain –impossible to hide the soul’s lightreflected in troubled eyes… I played along though,humoured his self-deceptionnodded at assertions of calm Knew that one day the facade would crackthe mask would slip and the rage escape Why I didn’t run; I do not knowMaybe it was recognition –my own countenance […]

Hiss

Wrapped in reptilian attire, changeclimbs aboard my well-intentioned schemelike a boa constrictor – disarming me I am more inconvenienced than repulsed –after all, snake is my power animal,Or so the seer said…many years ago Days when I would wear the scalycomportment of power – invitetransformation- my essence a seeker But I am trying to settle […]

Beauty and the Beast Revisited

Met a bear who proclaimed himself to be a man;knew the instant I spotted him – lumberinggait approaching – that he was an animal,feared for my safety, would have retreated stayed at my mother’s side – sheltered infamiliarity – were I not so fixated on hisblatant woundedness. Sympathy blindingsensibility, i listened, hypnotized by the whiteness […]