A Star is a Soul

The night sky is filled with memories for almost everyone, even if you don’t realize it. Fortunately I do. The stars held answers for me that I couldn’t get from anyone else. My grandmother and I use to sit outside and talk almost every night. We would look at the stars and have our nightly visits. My grandmother knew everything about anything that had to do with me and my life. My grandmother was my best friend. She always gave me such good advice and always told me that I was very intelligent and beautiful and that I should never settle for anything less than what I deserved. She spoiled me and listened to everything I had to say. She was the only person I felt understood where I was coming from and what I was going through. She passed away two years ago. I was lost and missed our nightly visits. I had no one to talk to. I remember this day like it was yesterday the day I realized what the night sky held for me. It was March 23^rd I sat outside and gazed at the night sky thinking of my much missed grandmother. A very bright star caught my attention. It was the brightest star in the sky. This star made me feel closer to my grandmother. I felt like she was sitting right beside me. I was suddenly overwhelmed with feelings of contentment, happiness, and sadness all at the same time! The star is like her soul almost. I sat there and talked to that star. I told the star of my sadness, my struggles, and my achievements. Then when I was done I would just gaze at the sky and think. This is when I would realize the things I needed to change and what I needed to do. Almost felt like I was getting the great advice my grandmother would give. Since that night I felt like even though my grandmother was not physically here to talk to I still was able to converse with her. I can always have are nightly visits like it use to be. In the beginning I would do this almost every night I guess it was also my way with copping with the loss of my grandmother. As time went on I would do this less and less. I still every once in a while do this when I am feeling down and out like I have nowhere to turn to. The night sky helped me through my loss and got me back to myself. It may seem funny to others but to me the stars in the sky hold a loved ones soul and they shine for us. How amazing is that!

"Ever After"

The poem that interested me most but also confused me a little is the poem “Ever After” by Joyce Sutphen. When I first read the title my first thought was that this was going to be love poem of a man and a women who are going to married because ever after made me think of the love stories when the couple is finally together and they live happily ever after. When I read the first sentence “What am I to you now that you are no longer what you used to be to me?” I still thought that it was about marriage. I got from this sentence that they are no longer boyfriend and girlfriend and moving on to being husband and wife. This may be because I still had what I assumed this poem was going to be about in my head. As soon as I read the second sentence I was thrown off. It completely changed the words “no us” clearly showed and meant that there was no longer a relationship they were nothing. As I kept on reading it I understood that this was a relationship that was now ended and the women wants to know what she is to whomever she was with in her former relationship aside from the ex. Knowing that this is probably what most people would assume after reading this because it is pretty straight forward concerns me because thinking back on previous conversations in class about poems usually what you assume first is not the true meaning. It seems that every poem has a deeper meaning that I can never seem to grasp even when I read a poem multiple times. Also what concerns me is the fact that I didn’t quite understand the last line of the poem “All the sweetness, the layers of one thing and then another, and then one thing again”. The reason this concerns me is because maybe this line might change what I think the overall meaning of the poem is. All poems frustrate me because I can never get there meanings myself I always have to have someone to kind of jump start the whole process of uncovering the meaning of poems. I actually thought that this was a poem I would get the meaning and understand until I got to that last line. This is the reason this poem interested me and is one of few that I some what enjoyed.

S.W.A.T

Before I lived here in Texas I lived in Rogers, Arkansas in the country where all there was were trees, and not one house within miles of mine. Here is a picture of the front part of the house and as you can see there is nothing but trees.

 I lived with my grandparents, uncle, and brother. The only time I actually interacted with children other than my brother was when I went to school. When I was home I had no one to play with my brother played nothing but video games with my uncle, I lived to far from town that it was always such a hassle getting friends to come over, and well my grandparents would not be a very good playmate for a child of my age.

Since I never had anyone to play with I entertained myself by running around in the woods like I was a member of the S.W.A.T on a mission to trap this murderer that escaped from prison and was out in the woods. I got this idea from all the TV shows my grandfather would watch when he got home from work at night. I would dress up in all black grab my uncle’s Daisy BB gun (a popular BB gun brand in Arkansas), and run down to the garage to get the bug spray. Living out in the country bug spray was crucial if you didn’t want to get covered in ticks and jigger bites. Once I was all set I would run out into the woods on search for the supposed escaped murderer. I would run around shooting the BB gun, and hiding behind trees. I would throw myself to the ground and even talk into my shoulder like I had a radio to talk to the others with me on this mission. I would do this for hours until I was too tired to run anymore so then I would come up with a way that I wanted to catch the murderer. Every time I did this I would come up with a different way to catch this convict and of course every time I was the one to catch the bad guy. I did this for a while and even got my uncle and brother to play this with me a good number of times. I don’t exactly remember how or when I stopped playing this game but I know it went on for a long time because my uncle would always tell me “Don’t you get tired of playing the same game?” I don’t recall ever getting tired of playing this game but my guess is over time I found other things to do that would entertain and occupy myself.

Even though I didnt play this game any more I was still very much intrested in Criminal Justice and was very conviced for a while that I was going to pursue it as a career in the future.

I was 6 years old and my parents were divorced so every weekend I would go spend time with my father and his girlfriend and her kids. You would think that her being the girlfriend and the kids being nothing to me I would not like them but I actually loved spending time with them we all got along. The oldest of my father’s girlfriend’s children Jennifer and I were around the same age, and we are both girls so I really enjoyed playing with her. We both liked to play cooks this is why my dad and his girlfriend bought us a play oven and food so that we could play cooks as long as we pleased.  We loved this oven we would literally play all day and we would even make everyone try our fake foods. Even though we loved this oven it didn’t take long for us to grow tired of our fake kitchen and want to actually make real food. So that’s exactly what we did we went into the kitchen and decided we were going to make real food because we were so good at doing it in our fake one. I remember we grabbed all kinds of fruits we had oranges, apples, pears, kiwis, strawberries, and blueberries. We also had potatoes and tomatoes. I have no idea what we were planning on doing or making but we were ready to get started. We sat there looking at our ingredients thinking of what to do next. I looked around the kitchen and saw the sink and that’s when it popped in my head that we had to wash everything just like her mom did when she cooked. So there we went we pushed a chair up to the sink brought over all of our fruits and things and started to wash all of our ingredients. We went as far as washing them with soap. Once we had everything washed and rinsed we once again were stuck with no idea what to do next. This is when we realized the real kitchen was not as easy as our fake one, but Jennifer would not give up this is when she decided that we needed to cut up everything and put it in a bowl. Me always agreeing with her decided that she was right. We both got our knife and began to cut everything horribly and throw it into the big glass bowl that we sat on the kitchen table. I grabbed a potato and started to cut into it but it was not as easy to get my knife through as everything else was. I pushed the knife as hard as I could and I got through some of the potato and also some of my finger. I quickly threw the knife and potato and grabbed my finger. I could feel the burn from all the juices that I had on my hands getting into my cut. I ran to my dad’s bedroom crying and screaming that I could see my bone while showing him my cut. He ran me to the restroom and put my hand under some running water all while asking me how in the world did I cut my finger. I had to explain to him me and Jennifer’s plan to cook and what happened with the knife, but he didn’t understand a word I said because I was sobbing. So he just told me that it’s all ok and my finger would feel better if I went for a swim so he took me to the pool and sat me down. Till this day I still have the scar from that cut.