The Sound of Ink

She sits on my shoulder,  a feathered sage whispering to my dreams about a tomorrow I can’t see and doors yet to be open. With the gentle touch of my hair resting against her owl feathers I feel the caress of angels who  watch from Capricorn’s moon, and loneliness feels less empty. Outside my window trees write their wind stories across the glass. Without a sound the owl stirs  the silence with its wings. Within me the knowing forms, it is time for her to leave to write her own page in the journal of midnight. ©Susie Clevenger 2024  

I’m a dandelion seed, an astronaut trying to find home in a world that views me as a weed. Among the thistles of human judgement a free spirit is labeled hostile to the maintenance of status quo. Different is called demon, a light to be extinguished, a disruption  in the religion of forced definition.  ©Susie Clevenger 2024

Sylvia Path 1932-1963 Dead Grass It is agony to feel irrelevant.  I wonder if the earth swallowed me  anyone would worry I was gone or be more concerned about why the grass won’t grow any more.  Walking Dead The sun on my arms feels lonely. As much as I hunger for light my spirit has grown too comfortable with shadows. I’m the walking dead, a candle without a match. Blind Paper I beg ink for something to say. The blind eye of white paper frightens me. So Many Crossroads I took a long walk out of my mind. Insanity had so many crossroads I could never find my way back to me. ©Susie Clevenger 2024  

My mom says my imagination is too big. I should cut it into smaller pieces so the coloring book in my head can fit on the kitchen table. But how do I shrink the moon or turn a rainbow into ribbon when tomorrow seems a year away? I never fit where I am or reach where I want to go. Chairs are uncomfortable, shoes keep my feet from feeling the grass, and every time I see a butterfly I know one day I’ll have wings. Mom can’t hear the dandelions or hold a spoon against the window to catch drops of sunlight before night covers it with stars.  I don’t think I ever want to grow up. I’d be too bored. Where would I put my teddy bears when my bed is nothing but an ocean of pillows? Susie Clevenger 2024  What's Going On? ~ Children   Susie Clevenger 2024

I wonder if my legacy will merely be a faint light in the peripheral vision of a passer’s eye or a shadow figure of a memory, the name on the tip of a tongue one can’t seem to form.   No matter how many letters I write to my ten-year-old self she doesn’t seem to trust she will ever be first in line because she’s been taught, she’s supposed to be last.   I am beginning to understand why I’ve always been in love with dandelions. They are petaled, defiant sunlight thriving where nothing else can.     ©Susie Clevenger 2023

  “The body knows things a long time before  the mind catches up to them.  I was wondering what my body knew that I didn't. ” ― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees Am I building a hive of thoughts or is it simply I hold on to what I should let whither into forgotten? There’s no industry in building on a scrapbook that is filled  with artful attempts to decorate misery. Not every seed holds light nor  does sitting in a dead garden bring the bee to gather hope’s pollen. A bee’s wings move with incredible speed to remain still…Perhaps my mind’s frantic motion is the sound of my spirit ushering me toward tranquility. Oh grief, I’ve sat beneath your black lace that teases with release, but it is I who must seek the sun.  Even a rose grows when the clock chimes midnight. I wish life would not bring its hurricanes that demand resilience, yet do I expect my humanity to give me escape, when it is the honeybee that fights the hands of men so I might live.   ©Susie Clevenger 2023 The Sunda