listening to the Talking Heads makes me feel strange and silly, but i am doing it nevertheless.

I seem to have forgotten how to write. Somewhere in all the numbers I have lost my way through all the words.

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a little bit of what i am writing these days.... not poetry, just a part of me.......................................................................................
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I am taking a break from all of it. I am worn out. Worn in a way that creates visions in my mind of a good shoe, made of dark brown leather. A Shoe that has been worn and worn and finally the wearer, who walks pigeon toed, has worn a hole in the leather on the inner side of the toe.

I feel as if I have been walking pigeon toed these days. Walking forward, always forward, but with one foot turned in, to make me sore, to make everything a little more difficult.

When I was little I had to wear special shoes and go to physical therapy for my pigeon toes. I walked with my left foot turned in. I still do a little. My grandmother and grandfather used to have me walk up and down the driveway for hours practicing walking with my feet forward. Then she would put books on my head so that I would have good posture. Hour after hour walking up and down a driveway. But their house was my favorite place. In papa's arms in the blue armchair, on the couch with nana scratching my back while I dozed off in the afternoon, putting on shows in the living room, nana always exclaiming "careful don't bust your head on the fire place" as Katie danced around and sang songs we had just made up. That was the good part.

So I put up with hours of walking down the driveway on a 30-degree angle with a book on my head. I put up with Papa's nasty temper and nana calling me names. I just had to, they loved me. They accepted me the way I am, not perfectly, not with out flaw... But they loved me, nevertheless.

So when I got released from the hospital, it was Nana that I lived with that summer, when I was 12. It was nana who tried to protect me from myself, who tried to like Jimi Hendrix so that she could relate to me. It was papa who talked to me about my future and reminded me that he still believed in me.

So now... I am pigeon toed. Walking forward but with my left foot turned in, and I don't have Papa anymore to push me and give me advice and believe in me. He died the week I graduated from high school. I don't have Nana's undying love; I killed it with my selfishness and flawed choice of words. But I do have God and I do have my own heart, and I am going to figure out how to walk with out wearing my shoes thin and making my knees hurt... I'll be damned if I am going to let this life of mine defeat me.