There are things that I need. Things that I want. Steps that I need to take.

I should be working on my playlist.

Instead I uploaded this pic. I miss taking random pictures. Now, back to the music.

Getting it on!

My response to this week's Read Write Poem prompt.

We

I only want to stay in this moment
With lips pressed to fingertips
Fingertips pressed to flesh
Flesh pressed to flesh

Once we were unbroken
Ripe, with fervor
Unaware of the cost
And all too willing to pay

Then it happened
A misuse of words
I gathered them up
Only to use you
Only to let you use me
A complex agreement
To go on without feeling

Touch me, but don’t love me
I’m not yours for the keeping
Want me, but don’t need me
Break the silence with heavy breathing

And when it’s over
Let it be over for good

Sometimes it's hard to remember.

Writing this poem wasn't easy and I'm not completely happy with it, but this prompt was too amazing to pass up.

I remember tubes to feed you life
Eyes light and wide
Hair so blonde it was hard
To believe we were related

I remember the teal sweater
With a fuzzy poodle on it
The perfect going away present
I remember you looked sick,

But not on the verge of death
As we crowded around the hospital bed
You held my hand so tight
I should have known it was goodbye

I wanted to ask if you had ever peeked
Through the cracks between your mother's
Fingers when she was shielding your eyes
And doubted the person you were becoming

The March Challenge is on!

Read Write Poem's March Poetry Mini-Challenge doesn't involve any writing, so it should be pretty easy for me to complete. I hate to admit it, but I was "late" for the February challenge and only completed three of the five days. Ok! Stop making me feel guilty! March gives me the ability to start over fresh. I'm going to pretend that February never happened. :)

For the next five day I, and many other RWP fans, will be preparing for NaPoWriMo. I'm going to try to take it easy this month because last April was not easy.

Day one of this five day challenge requires us to introduce ourselves to a new form of poetry. I'm choosing to learn more about Fibonacci Poetry. You can learn more about Fib Poetry here, here, and here. You can also visit the blog of Gregory Pincus here; he's the creator.

Read Fiona Robyn's new novel Thaw!

Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free. Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow at http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102954314728&s=2607&e=001jQiaJQmZw8sBH9M2CzTq4pWrU61X2BCIJ7zA9X4QYst_-yYLzFhjdUaXPxrajG3fHonw-vIAiBoRQ6Srx8pDzHz42eLDBdmf5IOdS3PRXxYg_UdsZgw0yg==.

* These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It's a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we're being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they're stuck to the outside of her hands. They're a colour that's difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I'm giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don't think I'm alone in wondering whether it's all worth it. I've seen the look in people's eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I've heard the weary grief in my dad's voice.So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I'm Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I'm sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat - books you have to take in both hands to lift. I've had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I've still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about - princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad's snoring was.I've always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I'll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, 'It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,' before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It'll all be here. I'm using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I'm striping the paper. I'm near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I'm allowed to make my decision. That's it for today. It's begun. Continue reading at http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102954314728&s=2607&e=001jQiaJQmZw8sBH9M2CzTq4pWrU61X2BCIJ7zA9X4QYst_-yYLzFhjdUaXPxrajG3fHonw-vIAiBoRQ6Srx8pDzHz42eLDBdmf5IOdS3PRXxYg_UdsZgw0yg==.