Snapshots - San Diego Harbor, Coronado Island, Star of India

Poem - Where I come From

I come from a picture of my family

Twelve of us, together at once
Frozen in the animate language
Of laughter

I can etch out
The faces, trace their smiles
And say, she is me, second to the left
In the bottom row, between sister and mother
Yet I am not her.

I was once her
Dwarfed by my siblings
If not in size, but in sheer life
Caught between the states of impression
And self
Wondering who I was

Their faces are confident
Fleshed out, dimensional and whole
Whereas she is parchment paper
Transparent, flat, only an outline
A cartoon character
Not the lead heroine in her life

She is uncomfortable, uneasy
Uncertainty comes to life
In a black dress and high heels
Her face mirrors theirs, laughing,
But her eyes are pleading
For experience, for character

She does not yet identify
She does not yet embody
She does not know who she will emulate
Or follow, or become,
In her quest of self

And yet her body tilts
Aligns with her family
Surrounded by love and laughter,
And acceptance
And in the flash of a camera
She becomes me

I am from my family
I am the ninth, the sometimes overlooked
The always loved
But I,
I am myself
And myself comes from within me

Arizona Snapshot - Phoenix Zoo Lights

I went to Zoo Lights at the Phoenix Zoo last Christmas and this was my favorite picture. They clothe the zoo in thousands of colorful lights, many of them around wires in shape of zoo animals. The best part is the line of lit palm trees set to music around the lake.

Creative Idea - Altered Book

An altered book was an assignment I had in creative writing. You take any book and paste your poems, stories, and other creative things into it. My theme was "Childhood", so my short stories and poems revolved around childhood, as did my decorations. The book I used was one on the Everglades, which I chose because it had nature themes, and I knew I had poems that fit into the nature scheme. I sewed many of the excess pages together and used fabric, fake flowers, pictures, ribbon, and painting to add more dimension to my poems. The pictures go from the last page towards the first.

Short Story - Still

Short story I wrote a couple of years ago.


It was a sweltering afternoon, the kind of day when the earth seems to drift closer to the sun, enveloping the country in a heat wave. She lay on the cool tiled floor of the kitchen, clad only in a thin, stretched underwear and sports bra set that had seen the inside of the washer one too many times. A rivulet of sweat dripped down her face and clung to the tiny follicles on her upper lip, as the heat covered her body unrelentlessly, like a fleece blanket, suffocating her in its folds. The stillness of the air was broken only by the whir of the window fan that occasionally spat out a column of stale air that danced mischievously across her sweat-stained skin, taunting her with its promise of relief.

She remembered the last time the earth had grown angry and hot. She was eleven, the year her normality and stability was ripped away, leaving her broken and unsettled. She had run out of the house into the inferno, to escape the voices in her head. All afternoon, she lay in the welcoming shade of the maple tree, the drone of the grasshoppers’ audible in the distance, gazing at the patches of sunlight visible through her eyelids. In her mind she was a thousand miles away, basking in the cool waters of a sea, free from all thoughts. The folds of her dress billowed around her legs, and she heard the stillness, the utter vacuum of the sea. The ripples of the sea caressed her skin, leaving her cleansed and purified. She exulted in the weightlessness, and the knowledge that if she let go, the water would catch her, suspend her forever in its hushed embrace.

She opened her eyes, and the crack on the ceiling faded into sight. She breathed in deeply, conscious of the fact that a weight had dissolved off her chest. A cacophony of voices sounded above her, seemingly at a great distance away. A low pitched purr mixed reassuringly with a shrill desperation. She turned her head away from the noise and noted with interests small details about the kitchen that had escaped her until this moment. For the first time, she slammed the door shut on the voices, locking them away from her thoughts. The ever increasing din in her head had subsided, leaving her to gaze on common place items with child like wonder. There was a jagged edge cut savagely out of the cabinet, a piece of tile pulled away from the others, and a clear orange bottle lying just beyond her fingers, its hard contents spilling out, the child-proof cap forever broken. She noted with surprise that that was her pale, limp hand being clutched as trembling fingers tried to beat out a rhythm on her wrist. She pulled her arm away and rose up. She wavered between the doorways for a moment, before stepping into the lulling surf. A sigh passed her lips as she once more closed her eyes, letting the water wash over her in a welcoming wave of open arms.S

Arizona Snapshot - Canyon Lake

These pictures are from Canyon Lake, part of a system of lakes including Saguaro and Roosevelt in the Superstition Mountains, northeast of Apache Junction in the Phoenix Valley.

Poem - This is Me

I wrote this in Creative Writing for the assignment of Poetic Portrait- basically, a passel of poems about ourselves.

This is me
This empty sheet of paper
Slowly filling
with words, with emotions,
and I am relieved
Inspiration has beckoned
And I will not fail to complete
Because that is me
Anxious, stressed, nervous,
for nothing and everything
For anything I glimpse
For the challenges
not yet issued
For the failures
I have not committed
And yet, this is me
This lazy scrawl of words
This glimpse of greatness
And maybe, maybe
Hope still beats
Echoing my heart
Filling the void
that achievement left behind
This hole in myself
Fixed not by my accomplishments
But by creativity
This is me