Another Date, Another Disappointment

Photo by Janko Ferlic from Pexels

He kept talking.  He droned on and on.  After a while he just began to sound like all the adults in a Peanuts cartoon.  She felt this was one of the worst dates yet.  Part of it was her though.  She still compared them all in her mind to him.

John had been the one who opened her mind up to all sorts of possibilities.  He had said she would be his and she fell for him hard.  Problem was it wasn’t true.  When the chance for more presented itself he just told her she was a friend.  Heartbroken she tried to go on and forget the physical attraction and just focus on the friendship.  Even when he ended up hundreds of miles away, she still couldn’t shake the feeling he was her soul mate.

“Are you ready to go dancing Teresa?” he said interrupting her thoughts.

“Actually, I think I should call it a night.  I feel a migraine coming on and I’d like to take my meds before it gets worse.”

“Let me drive you home at least. I have had a wonderful time and hate to see it end.”

A wonderful time?  It had been a night filled with a never-ending stream of words from him, she barely got a word in.  She tried to come up with a reason not to have him drive her home but came up empty.  “Alright.”

They arrived at her home and she thanked him for the ride and hurried inside before he had a chance to say anything else.

 

Written for Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (FOWC) – drone

A to Z Challenge – Y

The letter Y …

April is drawing to a close.  May starts on Friday and I look forward to a new goal.  I have such messed up sleep patterns with my fibro, that I am not setting the bar really high.  I want to start a workout a week until the 15^th then two workouts a week and I will try to keep that up for a while before I consider three.  Almost 2 years ago I got a morning yoga DVD that I did maybe twice before I opted for the pool.  Now with some of the covid19 shutdowns there is no pool time, so I NEED to get back into some sort of exercise.  Yoga done gently doesn’t usually produce a lot of pain the next day for the fibro.  I just will take it easy.  I am going to need time to get the movements right anyway.  I absolutely loved the yoga/pilates class I took years ago before my health decline.  I know I can’t do that intense of a workout but this gentle yoga I think I can do… slowly.  I will bid April goodbye tomorrow and be grateful for a yoga workout plan starting Friday.

Running Late

“Karen will you hurry up, we are going to miss the previews.”  Sarah was standing at the door waiting for her roommate to get ready to go to the movies.

The apartment phone began to ring.  “Sarah, can you get that?  It might be Tom.”

“Hello?” she said with a sigh.  It was not Tom; it was someone selling car warranties.  “Let’s go Karen.  It wasn’t Tom by the way.”

“Ok, be there in a second.”  There were some noises coming from Karen’s room.  “Here I come.”

The two women left the apartment and got into Sarah’s car.  She may have gone a little fast to the theater, but Karen said it was ok, because there were no cops around.  They pulled into the parking lot 7 minutes until start time.  Sarah said, “You get the popcorn and pop and I will get our tickets.”

Finishing in their lines at about the same time, they headed to the theater.  They flew open the door, found their seats and the lights almost instantly went down.  Karen smiled and turned to Sarah, “See, plenty of time.  It was perfect timing.”  Sarah rolled her eyes in the dark.

 

Written for Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (FOWC) – preview

A to Z Challenge – X

The letter X …

This is where the honesty comes out.  This is when you find out what kind of a person I really am.  I admit it.  I have a guilty pleasure most people roll their eyes at.  The year was 1980 and I was in junior high school.  A friend from across the street and I were over the moon for the movie Grease… the only movie (well, besides Rocky Horror Picture Show) that I have paid to see multiple times in a theater.  So, for two years we had been memorizing the soundtrack and recreating scenes from the movie when it hit.  Olivia Newton-John had a new movie.

Yes, with Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelley how could Xanadu go wrong.  Well, it kind of did.  It got bad reviews and was out of the theaters fairly quickly, but… I liked it.  I loved the music – ONJ, ELO and Cliff Richards.  I still need (Ok, want) the DVD but, every once in a while, it shows up on TV and I step back into my youth.

I loved watching Gene Kelley dancing; he just glides and makes it look so easy.  The roller skating was not the best part of the movie, but at the time roller skating was big so I put up with that to get to the music.

It is not a great movie, but it is my guilty pleasure.  I own the soundtrack for Xanadu and for that I am grateful!

(Here is a video of a mash up of music styles from the visions the characters have of the bar they are creating)

Heathens

I can’t help it… I watched Suicide Squad this weekend and now this song is stuck in my head.  It was a must have for this prompt.

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head you just have to listen to it… over and over again?  This is about the 4th time through this video.

 

For Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (FOWC) – squad

A to Z Challenge – W

The letter W …

There is a small little town here in Iowa that had a water ban placed on it last year, nearly 14 months ago.  They still are without drinkable water and have no clear date when they will have the problem resolved.  Flint, Michigan has had bad water for years.  I never take my faucets for granted.  I have clean fresh water to drink with just a slight twist of the handles.  There are places all over the world where clean water is far too scarce.  Places where it takes days to get water.  Places where they use the water anyway because there is no alternative.  I am very grateful to have clean fresh water at my disposal and hopefully always will.

Mumbles … squeegee

Image from Google search

I had a car once that didn’t like me.  It kept having little things go wrong with it. One of the worst things (that I ended up just settling with as my ex wouldn’t do anything about it) was the windshield.  In the winter you had to wait at least 15 minutes for the window to clear… on the inside.  Sometimes if I left too early or even after a long wait it would still frost or fog over again.  This would make a trip to the school with my daughter an adventure as the sun was just rising out of the east in the direction we were headed.  In the warmer weather it would often fog over, especially if it was raining.  I began to carry a squeegee in my car to hit my side of the windshield to see when I was driving.  It was such a pain.  I am just very lucky that the lack of vision never caused an accident.  Have you ever adapted to a problem that never got fixed?

 

Written for Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (FOWC) – squeegee

A to Z Challenge – V

I have been writing for a long time.  One of my first poems I wrote for myself was a reaction to a book I read, No Language But A Cry.  I wanted to be a voice for this infant that was severely abused by her father.  She never spoke until her teens.  I wanted to stand up for those who did not have a voice…. I had big dreams then

In the nearly 40 years since I started writing for me the sheer volume of poetry I have written would be staggering if I took the time to count them.  I know in high school I had already hit 200.  The dream of me writing for a book would have to be issued in multiple volumes.

So when I write I don’t have any set pattern I follow.  I am a free verse writer for the most part.  I do occasionally dabble in lyric writing with verses and chorus.  And over the years since I have done the daily prompts I have expanded my vocabulary some.

You by now have figured out I am very grateful for the variety of things I have accomplished so far with my writing. Now If I could just be the victor of a writing contest.

 

No Stranger To Hope

From Pixabay on Pexels

A candid moment

Of a stranger

Looking for hope

You can’t see

The cardboard shelter

You can’t see

Faces that look away from him

You can’t see

The ones that try to push him down

But he still looks

Towards tomorrow

And he keeps

Looking for work

Looking to belong

Looking for food

Looking for his chance

At a brighter future

 

Written for Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (FOWC) – candid

The Poetry Man

(This is a little something I wrote for a friend and he encouraged me to share it.)

Photo by Mairon Silveira from Pexels

Words that are music to the heart

Familiar but like a new discovery

Engaging feelings in me

Sounding of a symphony

Like lyrics to my favorite song

I find myself in a comforting sway

Moving to the sounds of your voice

Reading emotions in every word

A concert held for the masses

But truly encouraging one

Singing from the soul

Your kindness echoes of an encore

A time to replay the song

And give you a standing ovation