Photo Credit: Wavebreakmedia LTD/Corbis
His profile picture shows him standing on the beach in running shorts,
The ocean breeze blowing against his bare chest.
He stands alone face toward the horizon,
Broad shoulders,
Slim waist,
Toned thighs wrapped in Lycra running shorts.
His first time bare-chested since her childhood, splashing naked in her kiddie pool.
He had her breasts removed,
Because she no longer existed in him.
And for the man he had become
Her breasts were constant reminders of the lie that lived there.
I am happy for him and yet Iâm mournful,
I struggle, seeing the two red lines left behind, silent scars
I know will fade in time.
I try to read between those lines to comprehend his story,
Because my story is so different, able to enjoy being a woman through all stages, and twice a nursing mother.
I canât help think of the women who are desperate not to make that choice.
Women with breast cancer who choose surgery to survive.
But maybe his survival depended on this choice as well.
I click on his photo once more.
In it I see a new life, stronger now, a man at peace with himself.
© Joanne Dingus
Divided Lines â A Poetâs Stance
Foreword . . .
In a world of ever increasing advances seemingly created to make our lives easier to manage, envisioned to bring us together, to draw us closer, we are still in many instances isolated and at odds and validly apart. Something is missing, there is a snag, a rip, a hole in the spiritual fabric that we all see; yet we continue to fail to address.
It has been said by self-proclaimed philosophers, theologians, scholarsâ and politicians that the abuse of words can be a danger, there are those that believe words are a leading factor in what ills our society. Of this we do not deny in full, there have been abuses, history is but a melody to that fact, yet it is also true that words have the innate capacity to bridge, to heal that which divides.
Opinions, views, religions, nations, people, even love divides. The focus of this book and the poets here in, is to give breath to a wide range of issues both small and controversial that lie beneath the surface. Things that we are often hesitant to discuss. In saying that, I will offer that the role of a poet is not to persuade or to add more rhetoric to the static we hear. A poetâs responsibility is to shine the light of awareness, to create a platform for dialogue, for healing, to gather up the images in an attempt to understand what we see.
© Demitri Tyler â Author, Measuring For Balance
100% of all proceeds from this book are being donated to the âStarving Artist Fundâ to assist writers in becoming published authors. Purchasing this book can help a writer become a published author!
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