The Sound of Ink

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

We were ribbon hung like party favors, organza dolls with hair curled into the fantasy innocence didn’t have a price.   The feral me already knew the dark side of attention, the coffin sunlight becomes when a monster curtains tulips with his shadow.   Born without claws I learned to sharpen my tears into crybaby scalpels people would avoid because once the truth is opened eyes could no longer claim blindness.   A dandelion in a murmuration of starlings who devoured blue sky in the endless search to be called pretty, I grew in the spines of books, rainbows of escape, and the nurture of oak tree nanny’s that taught me how to stand through the harshest crushing wind.   ©Susie Clevenger 2022 Shay's Word Garden Word List #9        

She’s an old girl, feather ruffled with echoes of every show that haunts her stage. The march to modern tagged her eyesore, but she held the historical ace close to her breast, and winked her glass paned eyes when the wrecking ball played its losing hand. When the 1920’s danced its way to the bottom, she was wearing crystal sparkles and singing tomorrow will rise from the speculation of hell. Youth likes to rattle its dimes to put age in its place, but the Aztec is a San Antonio Rose in the swamp sprawl of condos proving money can’t buy what seasoned grace can deliver. ©Susie Clevenger 2020 The Sunday Muse #108