Month: April 2020

behind the screen

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NaPoWriMo #12

I’ve not been able to visit my baby cousins every weekend as I am accustomed to doing, so yesterday, we had a little video chat session. It lifted my spirits tremendously. I also got a chance to chit chat with my sweet friend of God knows how long now. LOL. I’ve known her since she was a toddler (so maybe 32 years?). She is in the navy and is stationed in Japan–just to see her loving, sweet dimpled face was truly the highlight of my evening yesterday. 

Reach out to your loved ones, people. I did and I feel a bit better about not being able to see them during this time.

 

glimpses of you

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NaPoWriMo #11

There’s this gnawing feeling deep within me to be even more connected with someone who is dear to me, someone I’ve known for a little over three years. But, there’s also a lot of fear too. The core of me is saying, “Don’t take any chances,” but the smaller parts of me are screaming, “What’s the harm in trying?” I do not know what I’ll do I feel as though I’ll be lead down the right path if that path ever presents itself to me.

Thank you for reading. 

 

A Cornered Gurl Presents

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QUINTESSENCE: A Literary Magazine of Featured Medium Writers

Quintessence: Issue #1, Spring 2020|Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt

“Quintessence” is a literary magazine to be published yearly in the Spring. The writers you see featured in this literary magazine are contributors to A Cornered Gurl and have been faithful in their support, encouragement of others, and submitting strong and poignant work to be read freely on the platform. This is the first issue.

I am fighting back a few tears at this moment because what I envisioned for A Cornered Gurl is finally here … A Cornered Gurl Presents QUINTESSENCE: A Literary Magazine of Featured Medium Writers is published and ready for your purchase, perusal, and praise. We will take your constructive criticism and pointers too, as we intend to grow each year. I always knew I wanted to start a literary magazine, however, one to be shared annually. It is not lengthy and does not include more than fifteen writers. I knew it would not be an anthology or a journal. I plan on keeping the published writers in each issue to a minimum of around sixteen to eighteen.

In this first issue, there are fifteen writers, including myself. The magazine has three sections: Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry. It is an “8 X 11” full-color and glossy print layout, consisting of 42 pages. It includes four of my original photography prints as the images accompanying the beginning of each section.

We have worked incredibly hard on this as we wanted to give our readers something special.

Currently, Quintessence is published through Lulu and is awaiting possible distribution to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online notable sellers. The current price is $17.00 (USD) for a paperback which is at the discounted rate of 15%. It will remain $17.00 for three weeks in paperback form. After that three-week period, it will revert back to its normal price of $20.00 (USD) per copy.

Because this is the first issue and we want the word to get out as widely as it possibly can, I have also included an e-book copy at $6.50 (USD). However, with this format, you do not get the full aesthetics of the beauty of this magazine. My copy came this morning and I have held it so much that if the magazine were a person, I am sure it’d demand that I unhand it.

Below, you will find links to both the paperback form and e-book (to be sold only on Lulu) form of Quintessence. Now, that I have cried a few tears and seem to be a little overwhelmed with happiness, I want to thank this issue’s contributors:

Anto Rin, Anthony Cloe Huie, Elizabeth Helmich, Crystal Lady, Gladysdaeweeks, Roxana Ștefan, Sam Kimberle, Tien Skye, Terry Barr, Ngang God’swill N., Sara Weaver, Wild Flower, Willow T. Lovelace, and Barry Dawson IV. Thank you guys for your wondrous words, your tireless efforts in A Cornered Gurl, and for your ways of encouraging others.

Quintessence: paperback

Quintessence: e-book

Thank you to each of our readers, supporters, family, and friends and of course, our community here on Medium. Without all of you, our growth and this magazine, would not be possible.

Peace and blessings

Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium.

Addendum: I have created a direct link to Quintessence and also if you go to the site directly as opposed to viewing from the Reader. If you look to your right, directly under my “gravatar” is the tab and image for Quintessence which will also take you directly to its page. It is also populated as an additional page via the navigation bar.

the memory of the sound of your voice

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NaPoWriMo #10

 

Featured Prose of the Week

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Lita Tiara joined A Cornered Gurl recently and is now apart of our Young Minds of Medium community. At only nineteen years of age, Lita strips down to bare bones and shows us what it feels like to grow from the pain of past events. She also shows us what it is to love in the time of heartache. This week’s feature is a prose piece by the young one entitled: To Those Whose Are No Longer Near. Please, encourage her heart, beautiful people.

To Those Who Are No Longer Near

A love letter to those who left. We deserve a proper goodbye.

Photo by Yuvraj Singh on Unsplash

It was 2:47 am in the blatant morning when despondency knocked on my door, intruding my weariness. I couldn’t say that it was what I expected to keep me company, yet somehow it has taken control over my state. I am now, restless.

For some unknown reason, the gleaming cold of the lonely night hugged me from behind and harrowed my aching back. I crave to delete every thought of you as fast as how your feelings swiftly evaded from my course.

I feel a constant pressure to remove myself from every known possible equation which would resolve in me and you.

A few seconds after, my head was swarmed with the scrumptious smell of the self-made brunch that you made me many months ago. How thoughtful of you back then for remembering how I like my eggs: scrambled and salty. My mind was succumbed with joy from every bite, knowing that they were made with pure intentions to relieve someone’s hunger.

Silly me for thinking that we would last until our hair shows no other color than ivory, the color of your favorite sheets that your younger self said this would suit best the childish projection of yours — how your future home would look like when you’re older.

Dews of my reasoning wanders off to God knows where when things could no longer possibly be. It yearns to wander to innumerable possibilities of a much more euphoric version of us, yet it wouldn’t bow to any boundaries which would remove me from your suffocating grip — removing every self-pleasing notion your words have projected, “I’m setting you free”.

The minutes refuse to stop rolling into hours, hours which approach the definite dawn yet, I’m sitting in the corner of my room filled with traces of where you used to be.

Crouching, I was, with my face buried between my knees — trying to let go of your soothing comfort from my body as fast as how you threw myself out from every known possible corner of your world.

I hoard each word you spat out that day:

I don’t think things can go back to the way it used to be between me and you.

They’ve consumed me raw fearlessly, without the slightest care. I could feel how frozen your heart was at the time, as I came face-to-face with the gnashing teeth of what I reckon those words would look like in the flesh. I lost the battle.

I don’t want to deal with you anymore.

The familiarity of what best describe who I am was nowhere to be found. They are not in the places where I would expect them to be — believe me I’ve looked. I’ve grown numb to the things that are holy.

It has now been weeks and I’m not weak.

I don’t want to ease myself into the pain anymore. Was I a better person when I was with you or vice versa, we might never know.

Yet it has come to my realization that we are now both in the place where we should be: where we won’t cry anymore.

This is the goodbye that I didn’t have the chance to say—

the light I never let out.

Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium.