My hand hurts, yet I keep on writing
Short Stories/ Poems/ Articles
Project |01
This is the opening of a dream/nightmare I had my junior year of college. This story has some truth to it since something similar happened to me on a train in NYC senior year of high school. It was a scary experience, but in order to lessen the pain, I decided to add funny moments. My original nightmare ended here, but I wrote more as time passed.
Running
Gasping for breath, her chest heaving with every stride, a young girl looks for an escape route. Her brown hair streaked with maroon swishing back and forth as she dashes through the halls of Penn Station in New York City.
A man twice her age tried to charm her on the train ride from Boston. She first ignored him, but he kept talking to her, so she finally gave in and attempted to converse with him. The easy-going discussion abruptly ended when he asked for her phone number. She gently told him that he was too old for her. That’s when the man’s demeanor changed altogether. Instead of just what seemed like a bored old man looking for someone to chat with, he turned into a man on a mission to show her a good time. He had confided in her that he had left his wife of fifteen years a couple months ago. He'd finally gotten a job in New York and was moving there hence the reason he was on the train. When she told him she wasn’t interested, he grabbed her arm with such force she could feel his fingers touching her radius. She wanted to scream but was too scared. She never liked to make a scene...this time she may have to. The man’s eyes had become fierce and dark, almost like a wolf. Honestly, she didn’t know what to do.
She wishes she had mace, but she sadly she feels her empty pockets. All she really can do is pray.
She's running for her life and all of Penn Station is dim and empty.
It was almost midnight when the train finally rumbled in. There's no one around to help her; no one to save her from this madman. She could hear him charging through the halls behind her. She looked back as she turned yet another corner in the maze and saw bleakness. She knew she wasn’t safe until her front door was locked. It's been eons since she was in Penn Station and couldn’t remember how to get to the streets above.
Of course, she had to tell her parents that she could get herself home!
Therefore, no one's supposed to pick her up. Not one soul would be waiting for her in Penn Station. She was on her own.
"Good thing I'm wearing my new sneakers," she thought.
Project |02
This is a play I wrote in Playwriting class. Since then, I have enjoyed writing short plays as well as some longer ones I decided not to put on this website. I also wrote a Christmas play for my church which they performed in December of 2008.
Bashful's Tale - a one scene play
Characters
BASHFUL – one of the seven dwarves
SNOW WHITE – tall woman with long black hair
Setting
Cottage in the woods
BASHFUL is sitting on the floor in the corner of the kitchen. He has a stuffed rabbit in his hands. He is gently running his hands over it. SNOW WHITE comes in stage left.
SNOW WHITE
Hi, Bashful
BASHFUL
BASHFUL looks up, smiles and goes back to running his hands over his rabbit
SNOW WHITE
Sleep well?
BASHFUL nods as he walks off stage.
SNOW WHITE starts to make breakfast. She opens and shuts cupboards, taking various baking dishes and utensils. She lays everything onto the counter. She takes out ingredients such as flour and sugar and places them next to the stove. She starts to mix the ingredients.
BASHFUL comes into the kitchen slowly and stares at SNOW WHITE. Her back is turned so she doesn’t see him. After a few seconds, he backs away and sits down on a chair on the other side of the stage and starts whispering to the rabbit. He periodically looks up toward the SNOW WHITE
SNOW WHITE stops mixing and tries to reach for the frying pan which is on top of the refrigerator. She then gets a chair which is next to BASHFUL. SNOW WHITE stops in front of him.
SNOW WHITE
Everything alright, Bashful?
BASHFUL
(small voice, cracking in places)
Yea, I’m fine
SNOW WHITE
Ok
Snow White proceeds to fetch the chair. BASHFUL’S eyes are watching Snow White the entire time. SNOW WHITE gets up onto the chair slowly. She wobbles a bit but then quickly settles her balance. She reaches for the frying pan. She is within reach when BASHFUL gets up quickly and holds onto the chair
BASHFUL
I got it, Snow White
SNOW WHITE looks down at BASHFUL staring up at her smiling.
SNOW WHITE
Why thank you so much
SNOW WHITE gets the frying pan and jumps down from the chair.
Bashful lifts the chair and brings it back into the living room. He goes back into the kitchen to watch Snow White. He then slowly goes up next to Snow White.
BASHFUL
Snow, White? Can I ask you something?
SNOW WHITE
Sure, Bashful. Anything.
BASHFUL
Can I have a pet?
SNOW WHITE
What kind of pet?
BASHFUL
Maybe……a rabbit?
SNOW WHITE
Do you like rabbits?
BASHFUL
Yea, they are soft and so cuddly. They make me happy.
SNOW WHITE
Is that why you hold the stuffed rabbit all the time?
BASHFUL
Yea. I don’t like being anywhere without him. He gives me comfort especially when I’m scared and shy.
SNOW WHITE
Where is he now?
BASHFUL looks down at his hands and gasps. He looks around the kitchen and then dashes off stage. He emerges with the rabbit in his hands.
SNOW WHITE
It looks like you may not need the stuffed rabbit anymore. You can talk to people without. You just need confidence.
BASHFUL
Maybe.
SNOW WHITE
If you catch a rabbit, will you take care of it?
BASHFUL
Yea!
SNOW WHITE
Alright. Go ahead and find yourself a rabbit but be back in half an hour. Breakfast will be ready by then.
BASHFUL smiles and rushes off stage leaving his stuffed rabbit on the floor. SNOW WHITE smiles as she watches him run off. She then picks up the rabbit and throws him into the garbage then continues to make breakfast.
Project |03
This is one of the first poems I ever enjoyed writing. In high school, writing poetry was a pain because we were forced to rhyme. Sophomore year of college was where I learned poetry didn't have to. Thank goodness! Since then, I have written many poems about God, my family, life and meaningful personal events, for instance, my uncle's death.
Coffee - a bop poem
​
When I wake up at seven
the first smell that hits me
is the stench of fresh ground coffee
I groan with disgust and throw a pillow
over my head to keep the intensity away
it doesn’t help, not one bit
Be thankful for what
you’ve got
Why does my dad have to drink it?
He drinks it most mornings while reading his Bible
it looks like brown water
it tastes like UGH
My dad does not need to drink coffee,
he’s not the coffee type
Be thankful for what
you’ve got
Mornings without waking to the
smell of fresh coffee
is a strange morning
I wonder, is Dad up?
Coffee is now part of my morning
I don’t drink it, but my Dad does
Be thankful for what
you’ve got
Project |04
This paper I wrote for my American Sign Language class. I started taking ASL in high school and fell in love with it. One of my dreams (I have a lot of them) is to become a teacher for the Deaf getting kids excited about my expertise, writing. I'm leaning towards middle school since elementary is hard to deal with when trying to get them to pay attention for more than five minutes. Though high school is when students should get serious and that's the time when they need a teacher who cares and won't let them skate by. For me, I am eternally grateful for those who have mentored me growing up and inevitably caused me to love writing and challenged myself. I met most of those memorable people in college. Their names will surely end up in my "Acknowledgements" section of my first book.
Teaching Deaf kids ASL or How to Speech- read?
For social and educational reasons, all kids especially deaf kids need a language because it gives them a community. Whether or not the child learns American Sign Language, the Deaf community will open its arms to them and teach them about Deaf culture. The kids will immediately have a family and be surrounded by people who understand their needs. They need to feel loved and appreciated for who they are.
Many different people (parents, researchers, teachers, and professionals) have different ideas on what is the best method for a Deaf child growing up in a hearing world. Each child and family is different and has various wants and needs. Education is a big deal in everyone’s life. Depending on how the child started out in being educated, determines where the child will go/how he will develop. The child needs to have every need met within the family unit as well as outside of it. In order for a child to do well in school and perhaps further, from his elementary education to college, the child needs to know how to effectively communicate. “Early language acquisition and child and family functioning, regardless of the mode of communication, are critical to the overall development of the child with a hearing loss”( Meadow-Orlans, p.12).
Major Points
Kids who are Deaf need a communication method sooner rather than later. If there is no effective communication within the family, the child grows up feeling left out. “Communication mode and parent-child interactions have also been the subject of numerous investigations and research has more recently focused on the quality of communication and overall family functioning” (Meadow-Orlans, p.13).
Many different literary articles say that parents should be told about every possible mode of communication possible before they make a decision. Unfortunately, many professionals tell them what they think is best for their child and often the parents aren’t even aware of other choices. A mother said, “When we went to [school] they kind of stressed [total communication]. He needs to learn everything that he can. Don’t limit him. Of course, there is nothing else offered, but you know, whatever the school says…would make it easier for him, I’m willing to do” (Meadow-Orlans, 20).
A mother said that a professional once told her that if she taught her daughter how to sign, she would never learn how to talk. That is not necessarily true; it all depends on the child. The mother found an oral program because of what the professional said.
Issues
Teaching the Deaf child ASL is easier for the child to learn quickly. Ighor Ahlgren, a Swedish Sign Language researcher, one said that every time a deaf child is born, a need for special education is born at the same time (Armstrong, 177). She means that both the parent and the child’s needs need to be met. The parents should learn sign language so that they can give their child a higher rate of successful language development.
Speech reading is a visual mode of communication but is much harder for the Deaf child to learn and therefore will take a lot longer to master. “Due to a number of complex reasons, only a few students with severe to profound hearing impairment are educated in comprehensive structured oral-education programs” (McAnally, 258). Deaf children simply have a hard time keeping up and staying at the same level orally with their hearing peers.
Many parents and educators want the Deaf child to learn how to speak first without a thought to American Sign Language as an option because the child is living in a hearing world and in order to survive, the child should learn how to communicate like the rest of the world. Teaching a Deaf child to speak, puts more stress on the child. He or she is being taught to “hear” something he can't comprehend. He will never know if he is pronouncing something right or wrong until someone tells him.
American Sign Language is stress on the parents especially if they have no prior knowledge of the Deaf community or been exposed to sign language before. The parents have to make the time to learn a whole new language and about another culture. Sign language can lead to complications later for the child when learning how to read and write. American Sign Language doesn’t follow English grammar so it is hard to transfer sign to writing. Writing follows spoken English. So for a native signer, writing and reading can be difficult because the child has to learn about articles (a, an, the) and plurals etc. which aren't found in American Sign Language.
Project |05
This is part of a final paper I wrote for my Public Essay class about the meaning of life. We each had to state why we believe this, in particular, should be the definition of "living."
This is Living, right?
Time. That alone is what structures just about everything in our lives. Wake up at 8 am, classes from 9 - 11 am, lunch at noon, class at 2 pm, work from 4 until 7 pm, dinner at 8 pm, meeting at 9 pm, homework until midnight then to sleep. Day after day, that’s exactly what our schedule looks like. Can we find time for our friends in that busy schedule? Will we find time for ourselves to relax? Life is about making time for others and not just for ourselves because not only do we feel satisfaction but other people feel wanted and loved. Life should be about the people around you and how you impact them.
In a 2011 Toyota Venza commercial (1) , it features a young girl talking about how after reading “the majority” of an article about how older people are becoming more and more anti-social. So she decided to get her parents to join Facebook and they could only muster 19 friends. She considers this to be “so sad.” The young girl, on the other hand, has 687 friends and considers that to be “living”.
Is that really living? Commercials convince you that this will make you happy so you buy that. Round and round you go on the shopping cycle. We are so glued to social media it is almost overwhelming. We have Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Blogger, Skype, Google +, Goodreads, Flickr, Linkedin and so much more. How many do we need? Some are for particular groups of people with similar interests like Goodreads or for presenting yourself in the job market like Linkedin. For me, I know I find it hard to keep up with my four email addresses, five social media pages, and my blog. With my course load and a part-time job, I don’t want to spend all of my time on my computer, iPod or phone.
We spend so much time getting the newest, fastest piece of technology or the coolest fad in jeans that we miss out on what life is really about. Life is not about being first in line on Black Friday. Life is not about wearing the newest trend. If you live for the next "best" thing, you will only be happy until another new thing comes out. Life should have meaning beyond that. The new HP ENVY 4 Touch Smart Ultrabook is one of the newest computers on the market. I bet that thousands of people were probably in line to buy it even though they have a perfectly good working computer at home, maybe even three computers. People who live like this are rarely happy for long.
The Edge Of A Hurricane
Project |06
A story I wrote for my aunt. For a present, she asked me to write something for her. This is what I thought she would resonate with, being a librarian.
SLAM
CRASH
SCREAM
SLAP
AND REPEAT.
The already tiny apartment suddenly feels even smaller. Lacey quickly puts her fingers in her ears and leans against the side of the couch farthest away from the deafening noise. She puts her head in-between her legs in hopes that it will make her disappear.
After a few moments, when the silence slowly comes back, Lacey looks over the top of the couch. Seeing no one, she slowly makes her way across the living room floor grabbing her wallet on the way. Closing the door ever so slowly, she backs herself down the porch stairs. When she sees that no one has noticed her escape she dashes down the street.
Within a solid ten minutes of running, Lacey comes to a tall rectangular grey building. On the arch over the doorway, it reads Hopkinton Public Library. Her solace and her edge of a hurricane. Whenever she opens these doors, she feels at peace. Smelling the musky scent of paperbacks, feeling the roughness of the 120+ pages of old and new novels makes Lacey want to curl up and die a heavenly death.
Taking her time, she wanders the aisles to choose not just any old book, but ones that will rock her world. After what seems like five minutes to Lacey, which was, in reality, an hour, she settles into one of the library’s colorful stuffed chairs and cracks open the first book of her stack she had picked.
Lost in the land of Yugoslavia, Lacey forgets the fight she heard earlier, the pain, the sounds and just focuses on making sure the main character, Findley, makes it back home in one piece. Page after page she flies, soaking up the words and using her vivid imagination to create the scenes in her mind. Some chapters cause tears to run and others cause smiles to appear. Regardless of her emotions, Lacey is content.
Hours fly by as she picks up book after book. Just devouring them like a starving lion. Lacey’s eyes never grow tired of reading each author’s tales of love or dragons or mischievous teenagers. Any book with a thrill that gets her heart racing, she dives head first.
No one else understands Lacey’s love and fascination for these books that libraries hold. From a very young age, this magnificent building in the center of town called her name over and over, beckoning her young self to peruse the long shelves. She still remembers the first book she ever held. She remembers its smell and its feel. They held worlds far beyond all imagining. She couldn’t stop investigating which led to her turning the library into a second home or maybe more truthfully, her only home. It was from there that Lacey would escape the hurricane to come to her solace.
“Lacey!”
The dragons are laughing as they curl around their victims. The night air doesn’t both them for they are getting ready for a feast.
“Lacey!”
The victims cry out towards their gods in hope that one of them will come down saving them from certain death. Place them onto a spigot, the dragons….
“LACEY!”
Jolting up from her rather comfortable place in the chair, she looks up to find Ms. Karington, the librarian, looking at her with a half smile.
“Lacey, it’s time to go home. We’re closed.”
We are closed. Lacey’s three most unforgiving and awful words have been spoken. Sighing, she starts to pick up her books, but Ms. Karington stops her.
“You can leave them there, Lacey. You can finish them when you come back tomorrow.”
Eyes sparkle as Lacey nods. “Thank you.”
Together, they head to the front door. With a wave, Lacey walks down the sidewalk back towards the center of her hurricane.
Project |07
A story I started years ago but am having writers' block. Any thoughts?
“This is your captain speaking. Please find your seats and fasten your seat-belts. We are experiencing turbulence. Thank you for your patience.”
Just breathe. Slowly. No SLOWLY!
Jenny’s heart is racing like a horse out of the gate. She looks over at her sleeping husband. Ever since they got married, she has envied his ability to sleep through anything and everything. When their first child was born, Nathan, he cried every 20 minutes after 1 AM or at least that’s how it seemed at the time. Charles slept through every…single…cry, hiccup and scream. Sometimes she wished they could trade -- she could be Deaf and he could have CP.
This trip to Athens, Greece is supposed to be their 10th wedding anniversary vacation. She hopes it will still be a reality despite the turbulence.
Another one hits and she falls against the window. The ground she could see, but such a long way down. The day looks nice; clouds are white and the sky is clear, so why all the bouncing around?
She breathes through her nose and out her mouth in order to calm herself down. Jenny has always been the type of person to make mountains out of molehills and be filled with anxiety about the smallest things. When she was a kid, her doctor told her she should try using crutches to get around. She hated them with every fiber of her being. She told her parents it was because they looked ugly but in reality, she was scared she’d fall down using them and give yet another reason for her classmates to bully her.
Compared to her fears back then, this she feels down to her core, is much worse. They are up thousands of feet in the air sitting in a large metal beast with “wings.”
She starts to think back to the recent announcement from the pilot. Was it the same one as the voice that came on when they took off? Didn’t it have a slight British accent the first time? Maybe they had been hijacked! Stop it, Jenny. Think positive. Pos-it-tive
She glances over at her husband again who is still sleeping; snoring just a little. She sighs as she can’t help but smile remembering their wedding night when he snored so loud, she had to move to the couch in their hotel suite.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Charles!? Are you all packed yet?”
Silence.
“Charles?”
Jenny LaMason walks towards their room to see why he isn’t answering. A few minutes later, she finds his head deep into a pile of dirty laundry.
“What on earth are you doing?”
His head jerks straight up hitting the wall. He moves his hand to soothe the new wound at the same time as his wife goes to help him.
“Hi,” he chuckles “I was just trying to find my favorite shirt.”
Sighing, head bowed in her hand, she shakes her head. Fingers lightly push her chin upward and she’s met with her husband’s soft tastes-like-peaches lips. Pulling back he plays with her black hair.
“My beautiful wife,” he smiles that perfect smile she fell for 14 years ago.
Blushing she looks down at the floor.
Laughing, “You always blush when I complement you.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“No, of course not. It’s one of a thousand reasons why I fell for you…even though you’re only five feet.”
In mock horror, she starts to throw everything (light-weighted) in sight. It was if the clock had turned back to 2004 when they started dating.
Twenty minutes later, they collapsed onto the plush carpet smiling like idiots wrapped in each other’s arms.
“We have to pack, Dear.”
“Not now….”
Chuckling, she pushes herself into a sitting position. “Think of Athens’ sandy beaches and bright sun. Maybe you’ll get a tan…unlike on our honeymoon.”
Charles opens one eye, half glaring at her. He had forgotten to pack sunscreen…..he wound up looking more like a “tangerato” than a human being.
“I’m not even that light skinned!”
“Sorry, sweetie. You were just not blessed with golden brown skin like moi!”
He picks up a pillow and aims it at her head. She ducks before it could find its target. Turning she sees the poor pillow lying haphazardly on the dresser at least three feet from where she’s now standing.
“You need to work on that aim, big boy!” Jenny teases him. “Let’s pack, COME ON!” She disappears into her closet.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two days later, they board the plane bound for Athens. Jenny has always enjoyed flying. The only reason why her knuckles are gripping the armrest is because of the wild turbulence. Slowly she looks around and no one but her seems uneasy. She and Charles will land safely. They’ve got to. She’s been dreaming of this vacation since she was a child. Greece has always been a sort of fantasy. White pillars, majestic ruins and huge stone statues. These next few weeks are going to be absolutely….
Jenny almost screams due to the sudden force. She catches herself before causing an embarrassing episode. An older woman looks over at her and smiles as if to say, “It’s ok, dear. You’re not alone.” That woman’s the only one who‘s gripping the armrest like she is.
Breathing in….breathing out.