Pink Lattes and Lavender Shortbread

In the unseeing  exists these rare moments to just exist. Appreciating time always comes in the quiet of the morning. Home is still and the world is still resting. Stillness is appreciation.  For the wonder of life unfolding even in its unknowing. Sit still in this unmoving of the new day  Attention to the sounds of the birds greeting Watching the sun calling forth the earthlings Marveling at all that is listening without sound Waiting for the moving When awakening means being The existing is becoming The still of the morning Bustles into awareness of existing In the unfolding of knowing a new day

 When is an eighteen year old prepared for death? Is it when the threat of it surrounded her from age seven and was spoken at age sixteen? Was it when she was four and her mother whispered her goodbye? Or was it when she was thrown into the deep of it without an anchor? The questions of mourning. Who tells her that the monster who kidnapped her took her son's life? And how does she process the words of the doctors who tried to help? Where is her next breathe that asthma squeezed out? When is an eighteen year old prepared for death? Who holds her hand when family abandoned her for their respectable shame? How is she supposed to overcome what never should have been? Who tells the ones who were supposed to care that they failed? Where can she feel safe? How does one turn back the clock of time to protect her? Why does the world seem to not care about girls who look like her? The questions of mourning. What happens to the boy whose life was not altered? Why didn't anyone hold him r

 I wish I could tell you that it didn't shatter me when you said I was "just a courtesy" and it felt like you swung a sledhammer against my frame cracking the tender limbs still standing trying to let you know that harm being done not to me but to the others that were hungering and thirsting trying to breathe free but could not eat or care for self while you fattened the calf of your ego and expected us to stand like steel and be unbroken from the cracks in  the foundation you pretended were firm

the bones of being exists for structure in frame as foundations of living and all the ands  standing and all the ands holding and all the ands held up by the  essence that flows from one to another like a circuit pulsing and rushing giving or not the whole of living the one of breathing two must exist together the knowing of being the one of living the other of holding the formation of both in the blood and bones the bones and blood what is on one is in the other both are  the being of being one not without the other the other without the one neither without life the be of being  in the blood and bones All Rights Reserved Copyright © 2021 by Antona B. Smith Pink Latte Publishing is a division of The Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group LLC Copyright 

gazing across the waters                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            pondering                                                                                                                   PRESENT                                                                            in this moment                                                                                                                                                  of be-ing     View of the Atlantic, Guilford, CT, copyright, Antona Brent Smith

silver strands  blue veins dimpled legs aching knees in praise of all her possible shrinking inches expanding pounds jiggling flanks creeping joints in honor of her still dreaming  

 18 Barely Wondering life Woman child Not an adult 18 Alone Being life Child woman 18 Scared Losing life child 18

It rained this afternoon Loud claps of thunder Almost couldn't see the rain For my tears falling down Black Mama Tears too many dying in their sleep on a run at a store too many stopped just walking just working just breathing It rained today And I couldn't see for all the weeping of Black Mamas.

Life spilled out like unspent tears watering a desert of dried up promises scattered like sand on an ocean floor absent water and mist to quench love's thirst. Left shrivled up and parched in the bright sun of expectation that the perfect shell would open up like an oyster waiting for the pearl to drop. Lying on the bottom of the pebbled walk stepped on like shards of brilliant glass clouded by the wetness of blood poured out.