I Stepped Away
Dream, haunting, hunted me down, dark of night.
No longer afraid of that place, it moves faraway on a fast fall down a tunnel, black hole, slippery hand lets go.
I turn away from the dark; life lights up like the break of day.
I can never be who I used to be.
Climbed, crawled out of the tunnel-sealed it with a kick. My foot print emblazoned in that dark place at the edge of the abyss.
I stepped away.
Jenny W. Andrews, Copyright 2019. All Rights reserved.
Between Two Bridges
Like a ghost I haunt these spaces, living here between two bridges.
Boardwalk beneath my feet, sags, cracks.
Been in this space too long, just now I have noticed the grime; jarred awake too late to backtrack my steps.
Spring afternoon, sunlight repeats itself, like me in my weakness.
Trapped, I am between these two bridges.
River moves on, connects endless streams-but, me, I sink back, drown my dreams.
Incapable I am of freeing myself, unable to move on.
Stationary, trapped here like steel girders, the pressure bearing down, pulling me to the bottom.
I look into the currents-the river oblivious to me continue to move.
Trapped, I am between these two bridges.
Like a ghost, I haunt this space, incapable of moving forward.
Like the river.
Jenny W. Andrews Copyright 2019 (Original copyright 2018). All Rights Reserved.
My Psalm
God has blessed me with the greatest gifts; butterflies’ orange and gold wings fluttering along yellow rose petals against sun dappled days.
Late afternoons, warm breezes refreshing me, reviving me.
God has blessed me with love, with memories like precious jewels that sparkle and remind me of endless October days that God in His Grace has given me one more day.
Another hour, another chance to see the sun rise, split the orange and lavender sky.
God has remembered me with millions of miracles that my human eyes have been unable to see.
He has filled this frail vessel with breath, blood, passion, and a soul that hungers, yearns, fails, succeeds, doubts, believes.
God has laid his hand upon me, called me out of the multitudes, called me back to Him.
He has loved me,
even when I turned and ran from Him.
He has gathered me to Himself like I am a wounded child.
He has known my sorrows. He has seen my darkest hours and He has shone a candle in the shadows.
He has lifted me up and He has restored me. He has loved me; he has forgiven me.
He has given me one more day to get it right, to enjoy the sunlight peeking through the trees.
God has loved me; he has been good to me.
He is my God; God of all eternity.
Copyright 2019 Jenny W. Andrews. All rights reserved
Sanctuary
That moment, the moment you seeped into my soul like poison,
an injection of you.
You shone like a multifaceted jewel, smooth like velvet spilling into velvety darkness.
I, I needed an anchor in the darkness, and you were what reached for me.
And I knowing better reached back.
Now,
when it feels too late,
I recoil from the sting.
Poisoned,
I am.
Your shadow hovers like impending death.
Trapped,
I am and I don’t know how to free myself.
Copyright 2019 (original copyright 2009). Jenny W. Andrews. All rights reserved.
Spaces Between Words: A Memoir
Oatmeal raisin cookies, sweet aromatic scent, warm clear steam floating in front of me like a pastry vision. Aunt Mary, brown like her cookies, lifts the plate and moves it away from me, and tells me to eat my dinner, to wait for dessert. Impatiently, I tell her that I had to have a cookie right then. (At four years old I couldn’t wait).
Behind her, I see a train track suspended in the air just beyond her kitchen window. It is in the near distance and I wonder why the train track is so high up and how in the world anybody or even how the train gets to that lofty spot in the lower half of the sky.
My mind drifts back to the sweet aroma of freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies, Aunt Mary moving them further away from me, and my yearning to touch the bumpy texture with my fingertips, and then to finally lift the sweetness to my tongue. Wild-eyed, I stare at the retreating plate. “Aunt Mary,” I gasp. “I have to have one, now!”
It was at that moment she paused. Tall, square shouldered, regally Cherokee, her ebony eyes softened, her words whispered low like a night wind. “Here,” stealthily, she slipped a round warm cookie into the palm of my pale hand. She smelled sweet like her cookies. Like a sacrament, I quietly accepted the special exemption I had been granted.
My cousins passed around me unaware of a wish that had been granted and unaware of a bond that had been forged. My Cherokee Aunt Mary smiles at me in amber hues somewhere down the darkened cavernous road where kinship and bloodlines blur, and I know that she is just as much a part of me as I was of her.
2019 Copyright, Jenny W. Andrews
All rights reserved.
Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think.This excerpt is from a rough draft of my memoir. I have been writing on it and reworking it for a couple of years now. Maybe one day I will try to find a literary agent to help me publish it. If anyone knows a reputable literary agent please let me know. Thanks.
-Jenny
Second Go’Round: A Tale of Two Marriages
I didn’t love you like I loved him.
(I loved you more).
I didn’t trust you like I had trusted him.
(I trusted you less).
You told me I had a wall around my heart.
(He told me I clung to him too much).
You referred to my first marriage as my first-go-’round, accused me of not loving you as much as I had loved him.
(He told me that he had never loved me).
Alone, I lean against the rail at Knott’s Berry Farm and watch the painted pigs on the merry-go-round go round and round and I think of the both of you.
Copyright, Jenny W. Andrews 2019. All rights reserved.
Learning Still
Learning still that promises, like breath, evaporate.
That lingering glances are just teases, false promises.
Learning still that tomorrow truly never comes, that broken hearts cannot be mended.
That saying “I’m sorry” is not enough.
That it is not possible to forgive or forget.
That the world is never enough.
Learning still that I am truly alone.
Learning still that I have not adjusted very well to what I have learned.
Copyright (original, 2009) Jenny W. Andrews, 2019 All rights reserved
Edge of Summer
Jasmine scented September morning,
heat lingers at the edge of summer’s dying.
Not defeated this clinging summer, sizzling, hanging on.
Refusal to quit.
At the bottom of my dark tunnel,
I struggle to glimpse the warmth waning like an ember dying.
Copyright Jenny W. Andrews 2019
I Need to Say
I believe in Santa Claus.
These are the things I need to say.
Stars on a June night long ago, waves crashing on a forgotten shore, wild horses racing down rugged moonlit mountain paths-these are the images worth living for.
The kiss of that man I had loved so very long ago, the memory of his voice still whispers through the darkness, through the sorrow of the passing of the years-these are remembrances worth living for.
The crush of sand beneath my sandals, remembering when.
Copyright Jenny W. Andrews 2019
Not going to write a love poem.
Not going to look out there in that patch of space.
Where I loved someone more than I should have.
I sacrificed myself out there, lost pieces of me.
Not going to write a love poem.
For something that wasn’t.
Copyright Jenny Andrews, 2019
Jenny Grace's Poetry and Creative Writing Techniques 