Working on a piece of prose about my late brother while watching Iron Man 2, and the only thing that brings a slight tear to my eye all evening is Iron Man’s dad telling him posthumously that his son was his greatest creation. Well, fuck. I’ll cry at a fictional character’s grief before I cry at my own.
Author: writersamr
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Dew
The day smells like yellow with a hint of blue
and you look like petrichor –
a little misty around the edges
a haze following youand who am I, I ask,
now the whisky has stopped
obstructing my viewwho are we, in this fresh
morning with dew on our lips,
beads of it at the ends of our hairand who will we turn into after
noon, when the sun is burning loudly
when our eyes can’t block out the noise
and my hands still smell like your voiceI breathe you in
and wonder if your mouth still
feels like how I looked the night before
spongey with alcohol and thirst
stretched with smiles and open, wild
tongue trying to dampen the fuzzy inside
of your cheek, like dew trying to reach
a dandelion seed
-
Medical Update!
Oh, hello there!
I thought I should blog as I haven’t in a while, and things have been happening. The annoying thing is, things are still happening and things will still be happening for the foreseeable future. Though I am not thinking too far ahead, so there isn’t much of the future that is foreseeable right now.
-
authorial intent
when did you start loving me?
can you pinpoint the exact day
and time, the particular thing I
did to make you look at me
differently? I want to know
exactly what it felt like then,
exactly what it feels like now
that it is familiar, now that it
is normal. Show me how you
see me and we will compare
notes – reader interpretation
versus authorial intent. -
If In Doubt
If in doubt, grasp all of your words:
Close your eyes.
Reach into the lucky dip bag of vocab
like a child fishing for sweets.
Feel for the ones that best fit the palm of your hand,
the ones that mould to the hills of your knuckles,
that give way to the swirls of your fingertips without
leaving sticky residue on them.
Squeeze the words, with their hollow vowels and
crunchy consonants. Don’t crush them. Test them to see
which ones are hard, which ones will have the most impact,
which ones will bounce and which will fall flat.
Pull out those words and throw them
in the direction of your target. The page, the
cat, your mother. The armed robber in the bank with the
hostages. Make sure you get the delivery just right –
a gentle underarm toss or a heaving thrust for
those targets who are harder to reach. Let the words fly
and pray the good ones stick –
else be ready to flee for safety when it backfires, or to
work your arm until it’s sore and your message is received. -
Lashings of Ginger Beer
I still have last night’s smell on my hands:
the fruitiness of my perfume;
the remnants of a spicy ginger beer cocktail;
a glass full of limes;
a whiskey I can never remember the name of;
burnt, sweet, sticky marshmallows;
warmth and comfort and heat and ease –
so much ease. -
IHadCancer.com Top Cancer Blog Runner Up!
The results are in for the IHadCancer.com Top Cancer Blogs of 2017! I’m very pleased to be named runner-up in the creativity category. It is an honour to be mentioned among so many other awesome blogs. I think everyone who is out there writing about cancer is pretty brave. And not brave for having cancer – because that is what it is – but brave for putting it all out there, for being a source of information and empathy, for sharing something painful and personal and contributing to a community. These awards are really cool because they introduce us to new sources for all of these things, and remind people that they are not completely alone. Congratulations to everyone!
