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ElusiveBard
“The best thing about reading is to escape from your life, to be able to live hundreds or even thousands of different lives.” -Anna Todd |
175 Posts • 76 Followers • 69 Following
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Profile avatar image for Maybelater2
Maybelater2 in Poetry & Free Verse
15 reads

Recycled

Disposable on paper still a tattoo on my soul

Composed to banish thoughts but they commit without control

A simple start, a domino effect before too long

No matter what, I know I’ll never write my every wrong

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Cover image for post fading, by Mariah
Profile avatar image for Mariah
Mariah in Micropoetry
40 reads

fading

his deciduous affections

were incompatible

with her evergreen heart

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Cover image for post Untitled, by Mariah
Profile avatar image for Mariah
Mariah in Poetry & Free Verse
62 reads

Waltz with me

Beneath the trees

Of plum

And burnished gold

I love you more

Than all the leaves

That swirl beneath our feet

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Cover image for post all that remains, by Mariah
Profile avatar image for Mariah
Mariah in Haiku
21 reads

all that remains

a brief inscription

upon a weathered runestone

of a love's last stand

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Challenge
The Emerald Challenge
Write the first chapter of your autobiography. If you already have it written, that's just fine: Post it. Thinly veiled fiction? Also just fine. Gritty and pure fiction to make us gush, well, that's fine, too. It's your story, but we want it. We also look forward to giving back to our current subscribers, and getting to know our new ones. Winner is based on likes.
Profile avatar image for TheWolfeDen
TheWolfeDen
544 reads

Redcheeks

I came into this world two days late, mad as hell. My parents were nine years too far into their marriage. My mom was two years from an overdose attempt and my father, five years from a decade-long disappearance.

My grandfather-- who would later assume my dad's role-- had the quirk of nicknaming all the babies born into the family. Sometimes it took a while, as he needed time to reflect on looks, personality, and memorable moments. Then he would christen them with whatever he found fitting. But mine came in an instant. As I screeched in my mother's arms, wailing in protest, nostalgic for the void, her father pulled me into his age-spotted arms and I settled, growing silent in his embrace.

I like to think that my soul recognized his, that there was some part of me that carried an innate knowing of the traits we shared. But that's a story for another chapter. If you're the skeptical type, then it's a tall tale for another time. My Papa looked at me, and I looked at him, face still flushed with the remnants of my tantrum. On that Tuesday afternoon in the late Southern spring, my nickname chose itself.

Screaming Redcheeks.

Papa was the only one who called me this, and usually shortened it to Redcheeks, rarely calling me by my given name. There was even a paint stick with SCREAMING REDCHEEKS scrawled onto it with a fat-tipped Sharpie, kept atop the china cabinet for the days in which I lived up to my namesake. My tantrums became expected, routine even. I was set off by nearly everything, even trivial matters like the dog not listening or an especially tricky level of a computer game. I was (still am) argumentative and questioned the validity and authority of everyone and everything.

With my history, I find it strange that others describe me as calm or stoic. I was noted as being a polite, intelligent, and motivated child, though that sentiment decreased dramatically in my teens. Anytime I'm complimented on my nature, a montage of screaming fits, unfeeling language, and brazen manipulation flashes through my mind. I think of the year I smashed all the Christmas ornaments during a tantrum, or the time I threw a dining room chair at my mother. I see my children's worried faces and my patterns repeated within them. Then plays a vision of my marriage on the rocks, with my husband wavering on the cliffside, peering into the depths of Irreconcilable Differences.

My temperament breathes in dualities. There's a consistent ebb and flow, tempestuous currents of mood and mentality. There is understanding betrothed to denial. Warm embraces are frozen in a duel with cold calculation. Within hope lives hopelessness. In the absence of mania, comes depression.

I am Screaming Redcheeks. I am Marissa Wolfe.

Somewhere, within the gray of black-white polarities, there have been touches of silver that slow the pendulum just enough to offer glimpses of what healthy, happy, and hopeful looks like. Just enough to strive for. Just enough to snap the paint stick and depart from the path of rage. Anger is birthed from sadness. Sadness is birthed from pain. Pain roots itself, unyielding, into the grooves of the brain and chokes out the chambers of the heart.

And yet, it has been my greatest teacher. My greatest motivator.

The flame-soaked phoenix wails to the heavens, wondering why she's been forsaken, but within her scattered ashes is the chance to start anew. She reforms, entrenched in her cycles, and cries a different song, more knowing than the one before.

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Challenge
The phoenix rises
"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” — Kahlil Gibran "I’ve died a thousand deaths, each time reinventing myself brighter, stronger, and purer than before. From the midst of destruction, I became the creator of myself. From the midst of darkness, I became my own source of light.” — Cristen Rodgers Wherever it takes you...
Profile avatar image for TheWolfeDen
TheWolfeDen
31 reads

The Jewelry Set

It was not quite an ouroboros.

Two birds, linked at the tails, pouring into one another, an ebb and a flow, a yin and yang, the holy messengers of the shifting tides of infinitude. They knew, they forgot, they smiled, and wept. But yet, it was all the same. What has been, will be, pacing footprints destined to become fixtures of the sand.

I slip the ring onto my finger--perfect fit-- and drape the chain around my neck. The earrings catch the lamplight, and the bracelet sings quietly against my wrist.

I lose myself in zirconia and colored glass, fellow fixture of the sand. I will be, I have been, I am, forever linked into the shifting tide.

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Profile avatar image for AnnieBLynn
AnnieBLynn
14 reads

I wish I knew what healthy love looked like.

Because growing up,

I was never given a good example of it.

The idea of fighting with a significant other makes me physically sick,

because I hate the idea that if I made things inconvenient,

they would just leave.

Yet, I fight with my family all the time.

Maybe it's because I know that they will never leave.

I just want to know what healthy love is,

what it looks like to actually have someone interested in you

and not just because they want to get into my pants.

I will never forget the feeling of giving in

and letting him have what he desperately wanted

only for him to completely lose interest in me.

And it almost broke me,

and there are still days that I feel like the idea of that will completely shatter me to bits.

I just hope to find a love

so unconditional and so wonderful

that all that pain will go away

and I can once again feel whole

in the arms of another.

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Profile avatar image for DroMata
DroMata in Poetry & Free Verse
20 reads

Touch, ache, fire

Touch starved, craving the

Warmth of another,

Holding hands would calm

The aching desire.

My body, pins and needles,

Itching to be held.

Set me on fire.

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Profile avatar image for LovelyNB
LovelyNB in Poetry & Free Verse
13 reads

Even though I have you

I spend all my nights

alone

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Challenge
Monthly Stream of Consciousness Challenge for April.
After one year of a really, really bad relationship, where you had to sacrifice your writing because of a passive-aggressive, dramatic partner who slowly but surely pulled you away from it, they've finally left your life, and you're back behind the typewriter, and you're mad that you were suckered away from it like you were for so long. Winner is decided by likes, and will receive a crisp $10.00 -Let it flow.
Cover image for post Why I Write , by DandelionWine
Profile avatar image for DandelionWine
DandelionWine in Stream of Consciousness
59 reads

Why I Write

He really liked my writing, actually. He was fascinated with my words. He had an uncanny ability to memorize any passage of literature no matter how large it was. He read every poem, short story, and even edited my first novel. I guess he thought it would impress me if he could quote my own words back at me. I found it awkward. At first, I really enjoyed it. He was more enthusiastic to read my work than any friend, romantic or otherwise, had ever been. But it changed. He started asking me if I'd written anything. If I had, he just absolutely had to get his hands on it. I'd always said my writing was a part of me. Quoting my words back to me, he said he just wanted to get to know me.

I know lying is wrong, but when he asked if I had created anything recently, no matter what had flowed onto the page, I said no. I preferred to volunteer pieces for his consumption and criticism. It worked for a little while. I could relax and write whatever I wanted to. My therapist recommended journaling and even gave me a composition book to use.

In my free time, I often used the journal. I hadn't handwritten much in a while, but it was even more cathartic than my keyboard. He caught me one time, writing an entry with a poem and a drawing of a bird tacked onto the bottom.

He asked to see it, and when I refused, it was like a cold breeze blew into the room. His entire demeanor changed. It darkened in a physical way that I'd never experienced from him before. "Are you hiding something from me?"

Naive as I was, I found no other argument to prove my innocence than to hand over the entry. And to my deepening horror, he flipped open to the first page. Any protest that the words in there were private, were hushed and waved away as if I were just a fly. I told him that I couldn't watch him read it in front of me and I let him take it home.

I wish I could go back to that moment sometimes and dump him right there on the spot. He claimed a relationship was built on trust, and if I didn't trust him, then we couldn't be together. But I could have done two things: first, I could have said, alright, then I don't trust you and we would have ended. Second, I could have accused him of not trusting me. But I was so afraid of losing him, of losing someone who cared about me, that I let him walk all over me.

I stopped writing.

I lied to my therapist about the journal.

I attempted a few soulless poems. Though likely some of my prettiest verses, all for him, I've since deleted them.

He thanked me for my openness with the journal when he gave it back to me. I still have the journal. I never filled in the last twenty pages or so, even though I had wanted, originally, to complete the entire thing like a physical copy of my memories, my emotions, and my ponderings. I haven't ever gone back to read it, despite the memory lapses, for there was more than just the manipulation. I don't keep it to remind myself of the pain and stupidity of that year and a half. I keep it to remind myself that I won't be naive or allow myself to be smothered. I keep it to remind myself to keep writing. Not for him, not for my friends, not for my family, not even for my husband who I'm completely enamored with. I keep writing for myself.

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