From the movie, Motherless Brooklyn, quote from actor Ed Norton playing Lionel Essrog: “Frank said anyone teaching God’s love while they hit you with a stick should be ignored on every subject.”

Can anyone relate to this quote? Catholic school memories could take you down this path if you went there for elementary and high schools. I can remember kids getting hit with yardsticks and yes, while they preached about God’s love. Nuns making us wear a dunce hat standing in a corner. There were so many instances of this type of poor teaching, aka abuse, school became how to…

This story stems from a writing prompt given to our writing group when I was in college.

“Zeus, aged, like the wind in his hair, but strong and virile as a youth, climbs Olympus and opens the mountain’s eye and reaches in to take the light that molds to his hand like it was a part of him. It is the source of his strength, it is eternally his, it is only his.”

Zeus reigned over everyone. He had fifty-four children and twenty-three consorts. A powerful Greek god and a protector of truth for which he doled out justice to…

Once upon a hill lived an old woman with scraggly grey hair wrapped in a bun. Wisps of curls laced her face top and side like bunches of frayed cotton balls. She rarely went to the market or outside except to tend her garden and then only on Sundays. Her mailbox was attached to her porch wall outside her door.

She ate from the abundance of her garden and froze the meat from her pigs and ate the eggs from her hens. Her garden produced mounds of greens and lettuces, tomatoes on vines, watermelons that trailed along her fence. …

nobody knows that I am shy
because love brings out the best in me
often making my shyness disappear

no one knows that I hurt a lot
overall the losses in my life
no one wants to listen and most
don’t want to hear

that I didn’t know how to get
away from someone who was
hurting me and afraid to ask
to appear weak or giving up
was too big a task

no one asks what I want
I don’t understand why
never a question to know me
makes me want to cry

I’ve learned that people
need love, not…

saying goodbye

I nicknamed her Emmie
a long-haired cat she was
greyish brown, black stripes,
and a drop of white
so fully fluffy, softly fuzzed

she went to sleep on Friday
my heart left at her side
I awaken each morning to feed her
but she is not there, so I cry

she’s somewhere gone away
to a place that is unknown
where all cats go to live
when left without a home

her sweetness still fills the air
a presence that never leaves
I see her frolicking at play
touching paws and mine retrieved

never a whine did she…

life is a lesson, a puzzle
one not always wished to learn
if learning is all there is
prosperity is what we yearn

life lessons can make us tired
we sometimes stop believing
that life will let up on homework
stop taking compared to receiving

this may seem a bit ungrateful
but truer than blue can be
for life can take the punches
it’s us that wants to be

calm and with less troubles
healthy in every way
if life will be my friend
I will be its light today

life is still worth living
what alternative is left
to live without…

In the book titled Magic Words, Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein, children’s and YA books editor and author talks about writing, sharing her wisdom and expertise, encouragement, and guidance for those who wish to write books for these ages. She is the editorial director at Lee and Low Books, the nation’s largest publisher of multicultural books for young readers. She is also the author of two adult books and four picture books. What’s unique about this book are the many imposing questions she gives us to answer and prolific exercises to practice, one…