Love of Writing

Fred D. Street read this piece during the Writers’ Workshop Reading this past Wednesday, May 22, 2013. An album of pictures from the reading is up on our Facebook page. The 2013 anthology is also available for just $5 – contact us to reserve your copy.

My love began – I would say in school – reading, writing, arithmetic.  Writing was always a challenge to me because I had to learn how to write a sentence.

Example – I’m glad we’re here today – Instead of – I am glad we are here today. It’s the wording of the statement and the flow of the words.

Writing has given me the opportunity to send a card – to send a text – write to a parent.

Writing caused me to have a sense of confidence in my experiences that I can write about with a desire to write more and more –

Writing gives me a sense of pride that I can write.

Thankful that I was given the chance to learn how to write, to go to school – to communicate with my brothers and sister, my friends at Holy Apostles NYC, whom I admire and appreciate and honor to have the opportunity for expression.

By Fred D. Street

Photo credit: kpaulus

Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Free Writers’ Workshop Public Reading

Wednesday, May 22nd at 7pm
Church of the Holy Apostles
296 9th Ave (At 28th Street)
New York, NY 10001

We invite you to support our soup kitchen guests – and to hear some wonderful new work – by attending the 19th annual Writers’ Workshop Public Reading on Wednesday, May 22, at 7pm in the landmark Holy Apostles church. Join us as our guests showcase their creativity and tell their stories of resilience, hope, and humanity.

There will be bound editions of the participants’ works of prose and poetry available. A brief reception will follow.

You Don’t Know Me…

I’m just a regular kind of girl.  I love reading books, especially those of a scientific temperament.  I want to know how hemoglobin turns into oxyhemoglobin, why celestial bodies are spherical, why is it possible to hear radio transmissions of a quasar many billion light years away, what is the meaning of life – I want to know it all.  I do occasionally slip in a romance novel or two here and there – I am after all, a girl.  I love to write as well because writing, unlike speaking, lets me take pause and gather my thoughts, backtrack if necessary and speak articulately.  Writing also is a bringer of imagination come to life, birth of worlds unseen, slipped chances made possible…I lead a beautiful life in my head and nothing brings it out quite like writing.

I love flowers like any girl would – I am a rescue for limp lilacs, red roses, pink and white peonies and fragrant gardenias baking in the sun at the local delicatessen.  I have just bought my millionth Angel Whispers candle because it promises to smell like a floral bouquet.  I love perfumes as well and collect them – not solely for fragrance’s sake but for a memory associated to it.  Downtown Girl correlates to when I turned sixteen, Wind Song for a particular Autumn in Brooklyn, Romance for my college graduation and Pure Poison which …which my little brother thinks is aptly named.

Whereas people hungrily look at a weather forecast to see sun-filled days ahead, I eagerly seek rain and thundershowers.  There is something so comforting about the rain – the water purifies as it hits skin, strengthens stems, revives a barren world.  Through curtains of rain and bellowing thunder, angels secretly speak to humankind, passing on knowledge.  However, man has stopped listening – they pray for days that scorch.

I am a mother.  No passion has been so voraciously needed to be fulfilled as that of it.  It all makes sense now – of how in every animal species, the mother bares teeth and outstretches claws to protect her offspring to the death.  Human mothers are no different.  My child is the remedy to all of my failures, my disappointments, my dreams that have gone unanswered.  He will, through me, succeed where I have failed, be content whereas I wasn’t and witness his dreams come to fruition through practice of guidance and inexhaustible love.  If GOD loves us most, then a mother’s love is certainly right behind GOD’s heels.

I am a believer in soulmates.  I truly believe that there lies an existence that complements mine.  In the inexplicable grand design of the universe, I want to believe that he is out there, waiting for the time allotted to make presence known.  Once I had a dream (nightmare is actually more befitting) that I was told that he does not exist, that GOD has not given him breath.  Upon waking, I wiped my tears and I kept on looking.  I will use these eyes of mine to search for him till the day I close them forever.

I am a Muslim woman.  Your first question, upon looking at me would be if I was a convert.  My answer would be a swift no.  I was born into this religion the day I came to be in Brooklyn.  I am no terrorist, I do not wear a belt of bombs across my waist, I do not hate America or any other religion and I believe the choice to cover up in a hijab should be left to the individual.  I feel like I am in the middle of a great bridge, one side my faith and the other my nationality.  I need both to cross to and fro to destinations on either side of the bridge.  I am a Muslimah, I am an American and I am proud to be both.

By Rosetta Miletti North

Photo credit: k r ranjith