Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST December 6th 2024

9 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we listened to an instrumental piece of music “Skimming the Fractured Surface to a Place of Endless Light” by Kaki King, from the Album Glow posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a place of endless light.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

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Please join us for our next session Monday December 9th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Skimming the Fractured Surface to a Place of Endless Light by Kaki King

Credit: Kaki King

9 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST December 6th 2024”

  1. Jennifer Lee's avatar Jennifer Lee

    In the notes you left behind

    I find the air to face the dust

    press my spine against the door and let it rattle against the frame

    You took the key for the lock 

    I kept pretending

    the gust from the unfurling of your wings wasn’t enough to blow the house away

    Take down each wall with the force of a hug that crushes fists closer to outstretched hearts

    Encircle the stuffed animals on the bed 

    and the height ticks on the wall 

    and the rows of shoes shifting in size and occasion

    and the bowl of fruit we take bananas from 

    until they mottle, bury themselves deeper into the place that made them forget trees and light and the air beyond the kitchen counter

    and the stacks of recipe cards, among them the sticky index for banana bread, where you and all your love for new beginnings beckons the darkness towards a second chance

    and the rot remembers its ripe crumby sweetness

    and we marvel over the glow of your hands and a fresh loaf.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Pondering the loss of someone beloved, where the memories and the objects that are left behind further inflict pain on a suffering heart.

      The immensity of your words, Jennifer, grabs the reader’s mind and heart.

      Like

      Reply
    • antoinette56's avatar antoinette56

      Thank you Jennifer! I feel grief in your piece so strongly. Phrases like “you took the key for the lock” and “the gust from the unfurling of your wings” make me ache for the apparent loss of the “you.”

      Like

      Reply
  2. michele348's avatar michele348

    About a place of endless light~~~

    Moving through the darkness,
    I find myself in a realm where I am jostled and prodded
    by forces I cannot comprehend,
    inflicting pain upon an unsuspecting heart.

    Am I to move forward trying to ignore further pain,
    or should I remain motionless,
    trapped in a trance of unrelenting
    suffering and disappointment?

    There is but one decision to be made…
    I venture into this darkness,
    disregarding the bruises
    that have been inflicted upon me.
    To remain in the darkness is not living;
    it is to surrender.

    So, I feel my way through my first few steps,
    and then I give it my all… running to a distant, glimmering
    ethereal light that I see before me.

    It is a heavenly light, guiding my footsteps
    toward happiness and peace of mind.

    I am no longer afraid of what might lurk in the darkness,
    for I am now engulfed in endless light…
    a light that remains ever-burning,
    a beacon on this journey of life.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • antoinette56's avatar antoinette56

      Thanks Michele! I feel the darkness of the tunnel so viscerally, and am intrigued by the move from the “unsuspecting heart” to “I am no longer afraid.”

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  3. antoinette56's avatar antoinette56

    Ice surface, sliced with blades

    Initially blank and smooth

    then cut one time

    then another

    Like skin, cut by scalpel, except the ice

    can be made smooth again

    My skin is now hot and red. Both breasts

    where the scalpel cut

    and the skin is numb and itchy (how is that even

    possible?)

    Sometimes little parts open and a bit of yellow thread

    appears

    My surgeon says my body is

    spitting stitches

    And I am pulled into the opening, the red flesh

    no longer hidden

    My fingers go there of their own will

    picking and picking

    at the thread

    Like

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Gliding on ice, skaters’ blades slice through the surface, which magically heals without delay. The human body is a different matter. Breasts, now devoid of the invader by the skilled hands of a surgeon, resist resuming normality until only after they have made their displeasure known. Temptation is there to speed the process, knowing you shouldn’t.

      Antoinette, I feel the speaker’s urge to explore the area that now seems so foreign, an area that will heal on its own time schedule.

      Like

      Reply
  4. al3793's avatar al3793

    A place of endless light

    He walked across terrain parched by the cruelest of desert suns

    a stark landscape barren and dry

    yet found respite at Babylon’s waters

    lowering the lame into healing from the desert’s isolation

    beneath the willow’s branch and shade of Lebanon cedars

    and along the way he gathered those

    who would listen to his word

    despite the unknowing, the uncertainty,

    the counter-culturalness of the words would lead to a stony place of death,

    yet those he gathered realized that the place of endless light was a space of being

    and were convinced to take that joy and mercy and light

    everywhere they might go on the way.

    Like

    Reply

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