Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 10

I DON’T SEE HOW


This is the smallest of the fragile excuses I use to keep from doing things to make me happy. Petty in a way I would never be with others, I rake my desires and tiny little hopes over the coals. Tired platitudes are plated up as first serves by my short order shortsightedness. Protecting crusted-over nonsense, I live the life of a lockout, not even a squatter on the fringes of my dreams. I stumble in my efforts to see hope, joy or my purpose, ignoring the fact that I must step from the box before I can see the horizon or more.



Rub your own head.
*

Olive Juice


For whatever the reason olives are often pitted
and once they are pit-less
there seems to rise an irresistible urge to fill that wound,
whether with pimento or children’s chubby little fingers
as they fish them from the can.

There is an opening, an answer must be found.
When I find my center gone
I have that same yearning, fill that hole!
It is an imperative,
a need that must be met no matter how poorly.

I will stuff just about anything in that gap;
the list is longer than the Bell directory
and yet none of it is an adequate replacement
for what has gone amiss.

So here I stand rife with questions.
What to put in there, what to keep out.
Is cream cheese preferred to cobwebs?
Prosciutto better than ice?

Nothing is better than some things
and the right thing is better than having given up.


You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 11

QUILTER


What more comfort can exist in the world than a conglomeration of turned edges and love? Fancy stitches or not, the assembled world of cloth stands testament to devotion and diligence. Careful collections, meaningful to the collector and mysterious to the possessor, fulfill the primal urge to shelter and be safe. Time is testimony to endurance. Thread against thread, solidarity is strength embracing flexibility. The bed of life is made and remade daily with the affection of kind quilters’ needles of love.




Find a room for zeal.
*




Wrong as wrong as wrong can be

To be wrong in my family and in my past
meant to be tortured and I prefer death to torture,
so being wrong meant death or longing for death.

I tried never to be wrong
as a way to stave of the desire to leap from tall buildings;
I did not turn into superman,
wonder woman or mighty mouse through my efforts.

I did turn into someone else;
I became a cartoon of a real person,
two dimensional and overflowing with irrational color.

Now I see how wrong, wrong can be.
Wrong is not an allowable excuse to be tormented.
It can be the turning point for knowledge if I choose
or the stairway to something deep dark and ugly;
my choice, always my choice.


You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault