I imagine your lips searching mine
for answers that only my heart can answer.
Your staccato-ed eyes try to assess any tell-tale signs
of my body betraying my truth.
But I will keep silent; my words will never utter
how you make my heart leap with
anticipation…each time I see you.
You have unfinished business with another,
so when those ties are severed…..
You will learn in time
that I love you.

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Photo credit cuny.edu
Here are four poems that I’ve loved for years because each has taught me lessons that I needed to learn during a particular time of crisis or happiness in my life……
1. Nikki Giovanni’s “I wrote a good Omelet”
I wrote a good omelet…and ate a hot poem…
after loving you
Buttoned my car…and drove my coat home…in the
rain…
after loving you
I goed on red…and stopped on green….floating
somewhere in between…
being here and being there…
after loving you
I rolled my bed…turned down my hair…slightly
confused …

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Tina was 13 chronologically, but much worldly and wiser than her years would betray. She spoke with such authority and confidence that you would have to remind yourself that you were talking to a child who happened to be…..carrying a child.
Tina was my roommate at the home and hospital and as it turned out was more experienced than I when it came to the mysteries of motherhood. This would be her second child…..same father…..a guy who she’d accused …

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1. Learn to speak French fluently. I am studying via pimsleur cds and even use the French Coach game for my Nintendo DS. I think French is the most romantic language on earth, so I can’t wait to be able to whisper sweet french ‘somethings’ in my beloved’s ears, preferably as we cross Le pont neuf in Paris.
2. Spend a leisurely weekend in a lighthouse off the coast of Maine in the summer. It will be nice …

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One day,  I’d like to make enough money on my travel website so that I can quit my current job,  sell my house and travel the world without looking back.   I tend to feel this way when I think about the years that I’ve wasted when I did what I thought others expected of me rather than following my own heart and ambitions.
I believe that I became less like the person I was meant …

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I was thinking about the fuss that was made over the hat that Aretha Franklin wore during the inaugural ceremonies and I was amused. Anyone who has spent any measurable time in a black church knows that this is not shocking to anyone else except those who are not aware of the rich history behind this phenomenon.

There is a long-time tradition of head adornment in the black religious community. While it may have started with the biblical …

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Reading an account of a friend’s life struggles served to be a very powerful and personal reminder that we are in large part responsible for our own successes, failures, near-misses, joys and sometimes sadness. At the same time I believe in the existence of things that are beyond our control like fate, divine intervention and sheer bad luck. Nevertheless, I believe that we determine the where and the how we eventually end up in this life.
Strangely enough, I …

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When you promised me your heart,
You didn’t promise your soul.
When you promised your devotion,
You didn’t promise that we’d be joined at the hip.
When you promised to be faithful,
You didn’t promise to become a slave to my insecurity.
When you promised to love me,
You didn’t promise to consume me.
When you promised to trust me,
You didn’t promise to be indifferent.
When you promised to honor me,
You didn’t promise pedestals from which I could easily fall.
You promised a sweet, tender love that seemed so foreign …

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I’ve made a pretty life changing decision. In all honesty, I’ve made such declarations before. However, this time it feels different. My life has become unmanageable in a lot of ways. I’m having surgery in a week for a meniscus tear in my knee, I have high blood pressure and who knows what unseen medical issues that may be brewing into an explosive and traumatic event in the future?
I still feel hopeful about life …

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Sometimes when I lie in the bed alone
Imagining you beside me
Like you used to be
And still catching a whiff of paco rabonne cologne on
Your pillow brings
Smiles
And somehow I still feel you
Tugging at the quilt
Tickling my feet and telling
Me that the blueberry waffles that
You made were going fast
So it was now or never
I still remember our solitary
Time
Away from the kids
Thinking about blessings
Never dreamt of
Just a short time ago
I see the brush on the dresser
Once so lovingly used as
You’d call me to …

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