Well, it looks as if I may have some more time on my hands than I expected. I am not sure what God has in store for me but for some reason I am not scared. I think that I am getting the kick in the butt that I need to get some things done in the name of procrastination! My job has been eliminated due to funds so I am going to have to figure out something.
I sure wish that I was the Keri here that had her whole life ahead of her and knew then what I do now!
Keri’s last chapter…. Or at least an experiment, starting from the end and going forward….
After reconnecting, Keri was wary. But slowly let down her guard. Though there was never an innocent place for them to land. They said everything and more. All the things that they ever wanted to say after a lifetime of not being able to. It was almost like going under water and gasping for air as they hit the surface, taking a breath and going under over and over again. Trying not to respond. Not wanting to hurt anyone. Weaning themselves, from the connection. Most of their contact was through sporadic writing. It was hard to stop. A year would go by and then one or the other would break the hiatus with a bit of news. His dad died, his wife died, Keri’s friend died, there was always something, always a reason to reach out to the other, and maybe always would be, until God forbid, one of them died.
Keri knew now, that she’d been deeply in love with the boy, at least as much as a young girl could be, and recently had come to terms with the fact that her love for Jack the man, seemed to be convoluted with all the memories of Jack the boy.
Though through the intensity of their exchange her heart seemed to explode, Saying things she was afraid to say before but having nothing to lose now. It was empowering and in the beginning she was ruthless. Jack had no idea how crystal clear her memories would be. He’d found her first. From what he could tell, it was apparent that she was married with a family. He told himself that he was going to just ask for forgiveness and move on. Nothing more. But she surprised him by letting him into her life a little more than he’d hoped for. At first the exchange was very guarded and it pained him to know that she feared him. But slowly she began to share memories and he told her that “this time” IT would be about her, that he could take it.
For several months their exchange was lost in a fantasy, when they talked or wrote, they both imagined the younger versions of one another. It was hard to grasp the reality of what their relationship had become. Keri worked non-stop on her book the first year after they’d stopped the contact. And then, something just died inside of her. The need to write about it seemed to lessen. The last time she’d heard his voice gave her a sad panicked feeling, much like when she was a girl, trying to break up with the boy she’d loved so much. In a time she felt that there’d been no place to run.
Now she felt unsettled. Needing a place to land to write and remember. And so she wrote….
Why haven’t I learned to trust my gut? My first punch of intuition? Why didn’t I run like the wind like I did the last time we saw each other when I was so much younger and afraid of you? Did you know that I hid from you? That I hated you? And yet I loved you, she typed in agony. She stopped suddenly and clicked print. And read. She printed another and another page and crossed things out and added things and all at once she was inspired and for the first time began really writing.
I never thought I’d feel like this again,
And yet…Nothing has changed~
For once again it is about your pain.
You asked me to forgive you and so I did.
For after all I said, we were “just kids.”
Forgiveness is such a simple word,
almost like a magical choice,
an eraser that removes the memories,
of all those times you raised your voice.
Or the silence of a hundred nights,
from the aftermath of a thousand fights.
Just like magic and POUF it’s gone.
A simple act that rights all wrong.
I might have been able to forget but in the end,
You made it all about you again.
Keri London
2011©
Coming back and finding work that is half way done. Work that I once thought as acceptable, perhaps even good. Work that you took your time to read. Work that I actually shared here! Yikes! Well, I am a little embarrassed. As I read and reread stuff that I thought was good enough, good enough to share. Now, I see it just wasn’t. Too many of the same words, too many times I said the same name on one page, too many times I said words like, had or actually or finally, over and over again! And I see so many mistakes. And yet, I know I have something. Something that made some of you follow me all the way through, so saying it is not worth my effort to continue is not being very grateful to the many of you that took the time to read this story. Besides, I know that I have a story to tell.
In the course of the first page to right now, I have lived through so many emotions since. I have ridden the proverbial wave and I truly think that my story has evolved. And that I am stronger now. That in my head my story and the reason that I want to tell it has changed. And if I’d tried to finish it back when I thought that I’d written the last page, it never would have had a chance. But now, I really do think that at least in my head and the bones of what lie here, I just might have a story worth telling.
The bones are still there. But now it is more than a story of a young girl, trying to save a young boy and his demons. It is more than a story about first loves and abuse, about mental illness. It is about a woman and her scars that reappear when her own daughter starts dating and about mid-life crisis and trying to go back and right the wrongs and almost losing everything she holds dear. It is about the young girl, running head on into the older woman she is now. Past her prime and even middle age, just now finding her voice. After all of these years she seeks the validation that she lost all those years ago. Just now being allowed to say the things she’d always wanted to say.
Today, we find ourselves inside a world of communication that once was non existent. Where once when we lost touch, a lost love was truly lost except by chance. A lost phone number, a changed address and pouf they were lost. Now through social media, in a click of a key and people are finding each other. It’s crazy. And sometimes if by chance, there was no closure, or the ending was bad, people are trying to right old wrongs, and personal Pandora’s Boxes have been being opened.
At first my story was about the abuse, how subtly young girls allow it. How difficult it is to admit to someone for so many reasons that you are in a place that is hard to share. It is the story of many young girls, and I feel it is still worth telling. But I think that I needed this time to go back over the pages, over the bones, and revise just a little. To also tell the end of the story. So I am back to tell it.
To those who have hung in here, to my writing mentors who have lovingly supported me, to my readers who have followed me here. You guys are the best! I’m still here, my story is still being written. Now let the revisions begin!
It all seems like a dream now,
you finding me, all these years later,
trying to pull back the years from yesterday.
I let you in, I closed my eyes and jumped.
All the years in-between vanished.
It was just you and me in that moment,
skin against skin, hearts beating, raging, stopping.
breathing, tasting, rushing.
Breathless memories crashing, youth returning.
Falling in love with each other or just the past?
Never really truly knowing.
And the struggle between the reality and the fantasy,
well it never let us hang on tight enough.
You slipped away just as quickly as you appeared,
beyond all of my values and morals and what people might say.
I allowed you in.
Why?
Maybe because I still loved you.
Maybe because I hated you so much for hurting me
that I wanted you to know what you lost,
What you could have had,
What you didn’t fight for all those years ago,
And maybe it was a little of both
Maybe it is just nice to know now that there is someone out there…
someone wanting me,
that believes that I was the one that got away.
You were someone that I used to know.
someone I escaped long ago
and yet I let you in
AGAIN
falling in love for the first time
nothing ever tops that
I fell into you,
tumbling into the past
and you almost had me
well you kind of did at hello
there were things I need to ask
things I wanted to know
so slowly I let you in
oh why did I let you in?
and then I couldn’t let go
it felt so good to just know
that you wanted me
and this time it was my choice
well it was my choice that last time
I guess all I wanted to say now
is that you could have had me
your life could have been so different
and you can’t be mad at me now
because it isn’t.
Keri London 2014
City lights and jazz in the air
the smell of smoke in my hair,
the first scent of a lit cigarette
are memories I just can’t forget.
Coppertone still fills my head
reminds me of things you said.
A time of day still makes me smile,
our hearts store them like a file.
Forgotten like a vapor’s mist
don’t mean that they don’t exist.
A song or smell has a knack
of snapping us so quickly back,
at any given time you see
I can find you in my memories.
Ah, yes the smell of smoke in my hair
I close my eyes and find you there.
Keri London
2011©
I originally wrote this one on my http://dianereedwiter.wordpress.com blog today, but really felt that it belonged here.
2011©
Like a vapor
clearly visible
appearing
and
disappearing
you yanked me back
into a place
and then left
without a trace
I want to
cry
and
scream
and shake you,
I want to run
and catch
and break you
And I wonder…
was it you?
Or just a time
in my life
you took me
back to
that made
it all seem
so much like
magic?
Keri London 1977©
Wandering endlessly backwards
as the songs we played still fall on my heart
Backing away instead of staying,
trying to make sense of what’s fallen apart
Knowing love’s not so simple ,
sometimes, more than words can describe
like running in the rain barefoot,
while others just stay inside.
Keri London
1977©
The shadows still block the light
and yet sunshine flickers through.
When I wash my car, even now,
I always think of you!
Why do my memories seem
like a valued work of art?
Why is it that yesterday
is still trapped inside my heart?
Am I just in love with the boy
that I wanted you to be,
even though today,
you are but a stranger now to me?
It makes me wonder if I was just in love
with the “you” inside my head,
just a figment of my imagination
a mere fantasy instead…
An escape from reality,
a place that I softly fall,
a love that I used to know
that meant the most of all?
Or was it ever really real,
that place I’d wander to…
The Neverland of make believe
where I thought that I’d find you?
Keri London
1977©
keris journal 
