Affair With Words

Well...I was 6 when Child Protective Services came to get us. I lived with my mom and my three sisters, the youngest was Donna she was 5 & Lizzy was 7 and Mary was 10. I remember most of my family lived in the same neighborhood like my two Aunts and my uncle and grandpa and grandma. There was an occasional gunshot, sometimes there was a fire truck rushing down our street . We lived on top of a hill at 1015 Norwich in Grand Rapids. I still remember every detail of the house we lived in.

Ten year old Sonny Champagne always knew he had magic in his blood. He could sometimes hear the whispers of his ancestor's spirits; he saw things around people that no one else could see. He knew that because at a young age he began to fact check with family and friends. Of course, they all assumed he simply had a wonderful imagination and humored his inquiries.

I am driven. It wasn’t always that way. The passions I developed inside as a result of my experiences became too powerful to restrain. When I began to speak again, I understood the value of words and the power they held. I began to perceive words as a tool; a powerful, meaningful weapon against the adversity I have witnessed in this world and the changes I needed to see in it. My passion for change and equal opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, stability, and health have motivated me to master my potential and to develop my leadership skills in order to provide a service to our world and future.

Sitting in the crook of a cushioned armchair, I watch the smiling faces of infants flash across the screen of my aunt 's TV. I shift my weight to fold into a more comfortable position, only to be met by a cry of protest. I quickly jump up, my maternal switch being flipped, and begin to soothe. I whisper an old lullaby and hold her hands in mine. Once she has calmed down, I rewind to the beginning of the recorded Huggies commercial, as I had done hundreds of times before, and allow my grandmother to laugh and coo at the toothless grins on the television.

The smell of chlorine hurt my nose. I panicked my way to the emergency room with my uncle and brother, holding my mother’s hand, I know she will feel safe when I’m with her. “Please don’t save me,” She wept as she spoke. Her voice was assured, as if she had already made the decision. I tightened my grip to prevent myself from losing her in my hands. I would never let myself lose her in my own hands.

Fuck you, she said. Spit came out of her mouth and landed on her chin.

Poetry can be a way to look further into the life of the authors and a way to put your feelings into words. A woman by the name Anne Bradstreet is a wonderful example of that. She wrote a style of poetry called “domestic poetry” where she depicted things you didn’t normally know about back in the 1600’s. She gave an inside look on what the home and family life was like, which could’ve gone unnoted if it wasn’t for her. Within her writings, she spilled what her beliefs and home life was like.

Sierra was stirred from her rest, the sounds of someone making landing near her. She kept her breathing slow, measured. She couldn’t see anything, but that was to be expected, given the counter she had hidden herself in. She listened, focusing on the things happening outside of her, instead of her heart beating through her chest, the pounding of blood in her ears. The footsteps were soft, swift, and yet lingering. Just one, Sierra thought to herself, one is good. I can take down one. Unless it’s a scout, and there are a dozen waiting just outside. She felt herself shaking, pushing down the terror, gripping her shotgun close to her chest.

I gazed at her slightly parted, rose tinted, lips as my cheeks emitted a soft pink glow. This is the closest I have ever been to her and I could smell the rich milky chocolate ushering through her lips. Clearly she enjoyed my present. My hand carefully hovered above her cheek and slowly moved down caressing her olive skin. Her lips rose into a crescent of satisfaction, mine followed suit. I looked into her eyes, and all I could see was our future; Past the waves of turquoise and silver, I knew we could be happy. Her breath caught as my fingers began to trace down to length of her left arm. Slowly, my fingers began to wrap round her waist, one by one. We both moved closer, erasing anything left between us. I’m ready, she’s ready.

The bright lights blinded me and the chilly air numbed my tense skin. A nurse hovered over me, searching my face for the response that my lips could barely speak. Her nose and mouth were covered with a pale blue mask, clean and frightening. My cloudy mind perceived her as an alien ready to carefully attack.

I found poetry to help me express what my thoughts and feelings were more so than journaling and writing stories. Writing stories was fun, but it also restricted me from showing my true potential. It always goes back to the “one topic” thing. It has always been difficult for me to write about a certain topic, and stay focused. Journaling was better than writing stories, but it was always straightforward. It is really hard to go back and read what you are feeling, when you are depressed and

They had questions and I had my pride. Pride is not always a bad thing. Their question was, how do you think he is going to support a wife and a baby when he is going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life? It is a hard question but it was referred to wrong people. Yes, I didn 't have an answer to that question. Shantell passed her matric, she was eight months pregnant when she got her matric results. I couldn 't manage to complete my matric that year.

It felt like the lids to my eyes where being forced open while cans of salt pored into them. I moved my arms in front of me to act as my eyes and I could feel my flesh grinding and oozing as though it was replaced with something fowl. With chard fingers I felt around my face, feeling the skin that protected my eyes, now as sharp as trillions of infinite razor blades. I opened my eyes once more and the light’s intensity burned into my eyes, but I could endure. I held my hands out once more hiding my eyes from the intense light. The floor seemed to move unnaturally, like I was walking on river of slime. Everything around me seemed to slither in and out of the light into the darkness in my mind. “Ahggg.” I called out for help, feeling

I was sitting alone in the couch, waiting for my girls to come home from the market. My eyes flew to the box contained me and Dreena’s memories. It would help me to reduce the tension, so I opened it and my smile directed to one of the poems she wrote. I actually found this in her bag, maybe she was shy to give it directly since the poem was so passionate and sexual. I read words by words, being stressed out got me paying attention to details. Something was not right about the poem. Something I did not see before. My lungs filled with tensions.

‘Le Petit Salon’ was approximately twenty feet away from the office of the Baron, and its name that suggested the idea of a small and cozy nest, did not prepare me for the vast and lavishly furnished living room where the guests who awaited there, seemed to be lost in its abundant space. As I came in, I felt in my ears for just a negligible fraction of time, the implosion of a deep icy silence, the same profound and dark absence of sound that must have reigned in the nothingness preceding the universal ‘Big Bang’. And suddenly, after that split second of total postponement, life returned to the assembly.