pulse

a stranger cupped my
hand in hers at the curb
of the crosswalk, and looked
at me pleadingly.

I am funny about touch if
I don’t know you, and sometimes
even when I do, but I knew
something was wrong
when I saw her eyes dancing
like they were running away
from terror.

I tilted my head and leaned
into her personal space and
smelled fear.
caution warned me not
to turn around, so I didn’t,
but I could hear him
breathing.

a cop–woman, stood by
her cruiser a block away,
and sitting shotgun was her
partner. I looked at her, raising
my tethered hand, and then
looked at the silent woman,
and the cop knew.

the man started running
as soon as their eyes locked.
the silent woman sat in
the backseat, and closed
the cruiser’s door.

I walked two blocks home,
dangling my hand at my
side, twiddling my fingers,
feeling the lonesome lack of
the woman’s grip.

I prayed for her safety as
my pulse quickened.


This was my dream from last night. I hope it isn’t a premonition or a vision into what will happen.

Mandy Patinkin Has a Powerful Message|Hope Still Lives

And it nearly crushed my heart, but I’m glad he said it; I’m just saddened that he had to.

Mandy Patinkin’s Urgent Message to Jews Worldwide

Patinkin grew up in an upper-middle-class family, descended from Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland, and was raised in Conservative Judaism, attending religious school daily from the age of seven to 13 or 14 and singing in synagogue choirs, as well as attending the Camp Sura in Michigan.


hope still lives, or at least, I think it does

many of us don’t
really have a heyday
to refer to–shouldn’t
we all–isn’t that
some sort of
requirement to doing
life the way it should
be done?!

I could be
overthinking this as
I typically do with
all things, but in my
head, it makes sense
for this to make
sense.

I know I can’t be the
only one.
I hope I’m not the
only one.

but it wouldn’t be
the first time, and
that, somehow, is
oddly relieving.


Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-Book and Paperback) yet?

I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak about the most recent events with my place of employment, as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.

solistitial & jujitsu’d out of love

Two poems written on Substack notes

solistitial

a solstitial event was
the day she left
silence at the foot
of our friendship.

there is nothing
more heartbreaking
than a woman who
doesn’t know her
heart’s desire being
capable of crushing
the heart of another.

now I have a
timestamp of when
I learned the phrase
“I will never hurt you.”
has an unspoken addendum:

“unless I’m afraid of what
your love can do
to me.”


jujitsu’d out of love

I’m at a point where
my mind is debating
with my heart to
not have it jujitsu
it anymore.

it’s tired of fighting a
fight for lackluster
love and never
winning.

I used to be a
strategic runner–
hurdling over dead
weight and con
people.

now I lean into
obstacles with heavy
artillery stationed
around my person.

I handle war much
differently in my
older years.

I know how my
battles often portray
themselves, and I
fight smart not hard.


Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-Book and Paperback) yet?

I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak about the most recent events with my place of employment as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.

until it all fades

musical selection: One Step Ahead, Aretha Franklin

One Step Ahead, Aretha Franklin via YouTube

until it all fades

we’re all just moving
about robotically;
carrying years of
hurt on our backs.

our scrabbly efforts
have done nothing to
alleviate the pain.

forced to exist in a
world of crafted
terror, the light at the
end of the tunnel
f a d e s.


Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-Book and Paperback) yet?

I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak about the most recent events with my place of employment as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.

We Should Probably Heed the Family Warning

A Book Review

Too Much and Never Enough. Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt

Recently, I finished Mary L. Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which I believe everyone in the United States should read. I sat with this book for a few weeks, savoring it. I did not want to rush through it, so I did not. I took everything in, digested all of it as best as I could, and I am happy that I spent as much time with it as I did.

I reviewed it both on Amazon and Goodreads, and the review is as follows:

“Every Family Has a Bit of Dysfunction

But the Trump Family, as it’s told by Mary L. Trump, Donald J. Trump’s niece, is on a whole other level of shadiness, greed, carelessness, and self-fulfilling tactics.

Mary, a Clinical Psychologist, posits that her uncle’s behavior didn’t simply evolve on its own, he had help. The culprit? Her grandfather, Fred Trump.

Donald was a puppet, a means to an end for her grandfather; someone he wanted to abide by his rules and show that he could carry on the family business in the most vindictive ways possible.

If Donald couldn’t satisfy his father’s requirements, his father’s love would be harder to obtain. Imagine knowing your entire life is a circus; that your performance is monitored and calculated, and if you don’t perform well, you mean nothing. You are nothing.

Reading this book gave me a better understanding of the current sitting president’s mental health, and a deeper look into his overall background as a member of the Trump Family.

I remembered his brother Freddy (Mary’s father) and tales of his demise before reading the book, and was recounting the story to my mother a couple months ago.

To thumb through every page pertaining to his involvement in his father’s business and how it brought about his dive into alcoholism and a slow rotting depression, made my heart ache.

If you’re an empath, you’ll read this book and walk away more knowledgeable about people-pleasing and the need to feed our parents’ curiosity into who they want their children to become. You’ll be left with the pain of this world because of the carelessness of a few.

Donald will never seek help from what his past has done to his present self. “Donald today is much as he is at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his response, or take in and synthesize information.”

And with this, we have a human being in the highest seat of the land (once again), performing theatrics and skirting around important issues because he is still living to please a person who is no longer alive; his father.

We are all at the mercy of a person who does not care about the American people and never will. The end goal for him is complete and utter power and the ultimate hierarchy status. Dictatorship. Kingship.

“If he can in any way, profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.”

For a deeper understanding of the person America wanted as president yet again, I recommend this book. Learn about the mistake we made. Engross yourself in the damage you may have caused if he was your choice during this past presidential election.

Take a look at the baby trapped in an elderly man’s body whose sole purpose is to obliterate anything that stands in his way of getting everything he wants.

Did you make the right choice? I am certain Mary L. Trump, the author of this book and niece of Donald J. Trump, would say, “No, you did not.”


I do not say any of the above with a silver spoon tied to my mouth. I am a hard-working, low-level middle-class, Black, bisexual woman who lives in the South. Basically, I am everything Trump hates. My bones are completely and utterly tired of the drama seeping into my marrow from the daily antics of a man who “doesn’t know any better.” Donald is still operating as a child would; a teenager who will tantrum it out if he or she doesn’t get their way. This is what we’ve been gifted with Trump 2.0.

If you can sleep well at night knowing everything that has occurred since January 20, 2025, has your name stamped all over it, then you and I would not be kissing cousins or good buddies offline. It is telling of the type of person you are with regards to what you want for the American people, what you want for our allies, and any other human being living and breathing on this planet. That shit is contagious, and I don’t want it around me.

As for the book, I plan to read it again and maybe again after that. To know a niece could tell the world all about her uncle while he’s still alive, lets me know his past is his present, and he has no way of differentiating between the two, and we are all going to suffer because of it. We probably should have heeded her warning.

the pull

holes come at unexpected
times, bearing down
on weary hearts–taking
our last moments of peace.

the strong hold on–ending
the fight before it’s time
can place a wrinkle in the
waves of life.

we grit our teeth and lean
into every storm until
we ache from years of
battling–the war, never-ending.

the pull is a place we find
ourselves lagging in
navigation, stuck on
fear, and when we stay
there too long, it becomes
home.

the key to remembering how
to escape is to grab
the closest thing to you
and lasso it to your beating
heart–give it the life it
has no chance to steal,

and watch it falter
before your eyes.
you’ll defeat it, and it
won’t ever see it coming.


Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-Book and Paperback) yet?

I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak about the most recent events with my place of employment as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.