Me, Marsha Marie

  Bushes by Marsha Marie looking thru the branches i feel lost everyday confused of what will happen of where i will belong fruit of passion has dried its last withered pulse fruit of the spirit is all i have left tangled branches engulf my life yet they do not hide me green, yellow, tan and brown like emotions they pass me around can i taste them? can i share them? the thorns are in the way fruit of compassion i see to the left fruit of resistance i see to the right who is the master grower in all of this confusion? why is he not pruning where i need? or is he and i do not see it? the floor is dry  the twigs crackle under pressure yet when i look up i see the light the light that will guide my spirit upwards where i belong

  Here I sit alone again. In a quiet hospital room - with soft, distant beeps calling out.  Nine months since my last blog post. I stare at a blank screen. My health? Well, no white blood counts; no immune system to write home about.  My new norm as I learn to live with my surname, Leukemia.  Thankfully, I have my laptop. My window to the world outside.  Mixed emotions every day. Memories of minglings and conversations taunt me. Does anyone even know I am alive? Leukemia can be so lonely. I long for a warm hug. A warm smile. A warm caress.  Whispers of yet another stem-cell transplant linger. Can I go thru that again?  I lost 100 pounds the first time around. I don’t have another to spare.  But I have to keep hope. I have to keep trying.  Leukemia cannot stop me. It’s only putting these fucking traffic cones in the road that makes me swerve here and there. They gave me only two months to live, two years ago. I guess I am beating the odds. So ...

Dear Diary,  Today's writing prompt is to write about a time that I felt really happy. I cannot believe that I struggled with this topic for over three hours. One would assume that a topic so simple as this would be a breeze to discuss. Oh but contraire!  I finally started listing all the different times in my life that I felt real happiness. So my conclusion is that happiness is all relative. Relative to the different stages of my life. Like when I was a baby, I am pretty sure I was really happy to get a bottle and a cookie. And I specifically remember being really happy while watching Winnie the Poo on our roll-a-way TV .   When I was a teen, the only thing that made me happy was hour-long phone calls with friends, getting my first kiss with the boy I was most in love with at the time; and getting a 10-speed bike for Christmas. Happy days! How about the time I became a mother. I think I was pretty fricken happy with all three of them. They are my true loves of life....

  Dear Diary,  Let's take a trip back to 2006 in Islamabad, Pakistan. I was a beautiful mid-summer day and I had accidentally ran my car into a wall. Yeah. A wall. Not sure what I was thinking. I guess I was distracted and just didn't break in time. I was only going about 10 miles an hour so it wasn't too bad.  My young daughter was in the car with me and it shook both of us up a bit. I felt something trickling down the side of my face. It was blood. When the car his the wall, my head slammed into the roof handle. I was bleeding from the gash. My daughter started crying and I felt so bad.  The police came to document the accident and I called a friend to come and take me to the hospital. The hospital was a nice one. I remember it being clean and everyone was so nice. In order to keep my daughter calm, I made fun of myself and would laugh aloud and joke with the nurses. My thinking was, if I laugh then my daughter will see that I am okay. I did not want to scare her a...

  Dear Diary,  If I could write a running news tag, I would warn others not to believe everything that they read online. Despite who is writing it, you just cannot 100% trust them. Make sure to vet everything yourself. For example, I myself have read two things online about me in the last year that totally floored me. Let's look closely at these two times so you can see what I mean.  The first story was very funny. One day I was Googling some friends from my past. You know how you look up folks that you went to high school with, right? Just wanted to see how they are doing now. Surely, I am not the only one who has done this. Well anyway, I put in one of my best friend's name and was so saddened to find out that her father had past away. I clicked on his obituary and started reading the family statement. As I read thru, floods of memories came to me. I really love that family. I continued reading of my friend's siblings and their spouses. Until I got to her brother. And m...

If I Could Speak to an 11-Year-Old-Me a poem by Marsha Marie childhood youth  what do you know  times of wind change with the seasons  whispers of knowledge i have for you study and study hard  keep to yourself and leave out the carbs lower your voice and your gaze  for your heart becomes easily blazed  future self hear my plea from a fucked up future i beg you to flee but wait.......... without those mistakes would my children be three?  would culture and languages abide within me?  my children so loving just the way they are had i not turned down that road so far so never mind 11-year old me  it's best you continue down the road that is to be