Forced Feeling Quote

"If someone shows you that they love you, don't make them hate you... and if someone shows you that they hate you, don't make them love you!" ~ Stephanie Josiah 4/18/2011

Oapey Meal

By: Stephanie Josiah 4/15/2011

My daughter, Ariana, calls Oatmeal "Oapey Meal"
and it's too dag on cute to correct her now

I'll wait until she's a little older

to set that straight

The boys are getting older

Nathaniel can say many things

mostly he says "no" and "Mommy"

but my favorite is "I yove looo"

It's been a crazy ride.
The past few years I've been battling
with demons
I'm not talking figuratively

My demons were "high risk pregnancy"
"little bugs" that
robbed me and my family of all of
our worldly possessions just-about
and my demons were "homelessness"

and my demons were "depression"
and "insomnia" and a "large grumpy man"

and a "leasing company with no compassion or remorse"

and an "awful feeling going into survival mode"
and a "where are all those friends that I thought I had from way back when?"

Even as I was in the storm and was screaming up to Heaven
fussing at God and His angels about how this was even worse

than the risky pregnancy that almost killed the twins

I was learning to stay in conversation with God

About anything... about the weather... about my daily frustrations
and I realized that as I've grown up, my words and His words
can be entirely complicated or heavy going back and forth
or they can be as simple as "Oapey Meal"

When I was a very little girl I saw God
He picked me up and told me I was in His family
and that He would be my father
and that was all I ever needed to hear Him say

So, Father, "I yove looo"

If love is blind quote... and "Flight Risk" poem

"If love is blind... I must have regained my vision," Stephanie Josiah 4/14/2011



FLIGHT RISK
By: Stephanie Josiah 4/15/2011


the sperm donor that created me
used my mother for *****
was stationed back in the USA
and became                                           a recluse

probably shooting rabbits in the woods
of virginia and sucking from
his momma's
bosom

I've learned to believe that
all men are                                             flight risks
combing over this world to find
their place or their status

from the businessman in suit and tie
to the crackhead with the crack pipe
they are all trying to escape from
that woman that they tapped for sap

that brok                                              en
responsibility
they would leave at the drop of
a pin

I've learned to leave first
no way do I want to be the one left
have me sitting here at the BWI
parking lot for over an hour thinking,       "Florida or California?"

men have only ever put women in cages:
abandonment, neglect, abuse,
sexual violation, a dumping
ground for their bodily excretions, low self-esteem

I thought I found someone who
didn't mind living in the cage
men made
for me

but he can't stand it here
doesn't matter if he helped to build it or not...

If he threatens to open the cage one more time
you know what I'll do...
I have become
what I hated

                                photo from Balletbase (c) 2006