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Where I Place Honor

I’m not sure where it all began. I can’t pinpoint the initial change or where my feelings shifted as a kid. Maybe it was an early realization I had. Only, I never had the language to describe it. I only know I that always felt differently from the rest. I was much smaller than most my age. I was babyish in appearance, thin, and terribly weak for my age. I never had much athletic ability and I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag.

I never felt like I fit in or I belonged — but I always wanted to.
I always Continue reading →

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Working Man’s Prose

I started a journey back in September of 1999. After close to a decade of me wearing a suit and tie and trying to get by on my sales pitch in the New York City Garment Center, I stepped away from the fashion industry and exchanged my daily get up from a white collar to a blue one. I was tired of sales. I was tired of the dances I’d have to do and tired of the industry. I was tired of not having enough sales to cover my draw, not having enough money, not having the right place to live, the right car, the right girl, and the right anything. After years of halfhearted sales calls and paperwork, which I hated, I was given an Continue reading →

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Reaching Out

There are a few things I have wanted to do for a very long time now. This is not to say it can’t happen or it won’t happen. Perhaps these are just ideas I have and they are thoughts which are enough to make me smile with good intention.

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to walk through the hallways of my old elementary school. I want to see what the cafeteria looks like and if the walls are still painted the same way because as best as I can remember, I believe the walls were painted with characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Then I laugh a little to myself because in today’s day and age of political correctness, the word dwarf is offensive so perhaps the walls in the cafeteria are changed now. Or maybe Snow White isn’t cool anymore.
I wonder if the Band Cave, which was underground, downstairs near the front, main entrance if I am not mistaken. This downstairs was actually a Continue reading →

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Father’s Day

I’m not sure where the shirt is now but I know that somewhere is a white t-shirt with a painted outline of my daughter’s hands and the words Happy father’s Day written above and below the childlike artwork.
I’m not sure where it is though — it’s probably stuffed in a box somewhere with other little scraps of memories. I’m not sure who chose the size of the t-shirt. I always assumed it was one of the kids that worked at the daycare center because the shirt was not the right size, which is fine because Continue reading →

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Letters From a Son

I have never been so sure how time moves so quickly between now and then. Yesterday piles up, one after another and somehow, here we are, exactly two years away from the last time I saw you.
We were so different then from the spirits we are today. You became you and left to exist in a different way. And me, I took steps to become the “Me” I’ve always wanted to be.
It’s strange though. It’s strange how we see ourselves while alive and in the flesh. And it’s hard sometimes too.

It’s hard because I suffer from this thing they call Continue reading →

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Written for A Mom

This is a letter to a Mom

It’s raining. The streets are wet and a colorful orb of rainbow glows around the dome of crystal lights that reach over the sidewalk like a soft bright yellow  pendants that hangs from bent arms and reach the from the poles that hold our streetlamps. This is a dream and I know it. I am back in my
Continue reading →

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This One Is From Letters:

Heading out early this morning, but first, I wanted to reach out to you and acknowledge the day. Somehow, we grow older and time sort of blends into a flat surface of memory. We confuse days and weeks or the times when things happen. It seems the older I am, the more I confuse the when and where of what happened and the years gone by are faded away, almost like a story that I lived through but feel as if it happened to someone else.
I can’t say I remember any of my Birthdays, except one, and even that memory is so distant and faded. I was 13 years-old, which, in our life is an important time because according to our tribes in the Old Testament, this the age that acknowledges the birth of manhood.
I can’t say I remember Continue reading →

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A Reason “WHY”

 

I was listening to people talk about the recent news of a man who decided to take his own life.
“But how,” they asked.
“How could someone like him do something like that?”

I never met the man in question. I can only tell of my personal experience. I can tell you what happened in my case with hopes that by exposing my truth, this explanation might possibly be enough to raise awareness and educate those who are affected. Also, in my effort to explain, I am hoping that this might reach a special someone, and they will know someone else felt Continue reading →

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A letter

I’m not sure what I remember when I look back. It seems as though lifetimes have gone between then and now, you and me, and all the years we’ve seen together or apart have changed us with age and distance.
You are somewhere far now. You’re somewhere in a place I cannot see or understand. And all I have are these notes I send to reach you—hoping that somehow, you know what I’ve been trying to say and the need to explain myself will subside to the understanding that in some way, you’ve seen all the things I needed you to see.

I’m not sure what I remember Continue reading →