Indigo Blue – Jacqueline Cioffa

THE VAST LANDSCAPE is not a paper book it’s her sacred, dirty little secret, twisted truths, and sweet, silent, young girl, hope-filled, pajama party whisper. The pretty, stubborn, fire red know-it-all, chaotic, poignant, gut-wrenching mess. 50,000 rambling words, the love letter to  her beautiful, chaotic, messy, best-self. A birth, a rebirth, and relentless, acid reflux regurgitating and redemptive truth. The restorative, calm sea breeze breath, choppy, stormy inhale, and liberating, tsunami exhale one only understands from the monumental fuck-ups; bleeding ink, blotched heartache and bliss.

GEORGIA PINE is the middle, the suspense, the mysterious, excruciating reality of the tedious, ad nauseam average, all too ordinary humdrum life that happens somewhere inside the suffocated, stalled, desperate breath of regret. The horrible understanding that your parents will fact die, you will indeed follow, and there is more pain in this one life than imagined. It’s the death that becomes her. The realization that she does not have enough time or too much to fix all the unfixable.

EVERGREEN… is she becoming, too bad, like it or not

BUBBLING UP

EVERGREEN is no longer about she. It’s not about her misguided, silly idealistic, hair-brained notions, rusted,  and busted waterlogged, overflowing, broken down pipe-dreams. Stupid girl, it never was. Nature belongs to the knotty pine, cedar smell abysses, etching and grooves on the tree trunks, and the brief, momentary spin-cycles revisited. The old woman stares longingly, sorrowful, pitifully into her puddle of tears, gazing down at her swollen, purple-veined, unsightly, knuckle-busted, hands  of delusion that held all the love and regret, too tight, curled inside arthritic fingers. She, is me, fifty years too far in front, saying hello and taunting good-bye from a solitary, soiled, piss-soaked, lonesome vacant room. She sits idle waiting on death while gazing out the long forgotten, paint-chipped, fragmented, wood rotted, unkempt windowpane.

Whittling, whittling, whittling away the wee hours, she cries herself to sleep. No one hears her tears.

THE VAST LANDSCAPE isn’t some, alien, Scifi, green screen infused Trilogy, it’s down and dirty, life start to finish.

If given the choice, how would she choose this do over life again?

If given the choice would she ask for a break, request a small respite favor, the tiniest morsel of less bird crumbs.

Hey man, he tells her, take it easy this time around.

She scribbles just a tiny, nothing, paper-dream request.

In utero.

She maps out a blueprint plan, timed and marked with an indigo-blue sharpie, disappearing, invisible ink, blotted, slippery, shit for brains, dried out pen.

Right here, right now, right or wrong from her very first breath.

Into whose arms she fell willingly.

Choose well, he goads, the God’s and the heavens.

Choose well, girl.

Choose love, not hell for fuck’s sake.

How could she possibly get it wrong?

Love hurts, he scolds.

Next time she pick smarter, richer, better.

Next time.

Who’s she kidding, there’s no next time.

There’s only this next to nothing, everything, sunny, stormy day.

And, her?

This girl, she’d choose the very same.

To live, to live, and to live through hell and back.

Do it again, and again.

Until she breaks.

Not quite, he whispers, not quite beautifully broken.

Let’s rock, roll and a break, sweet child of mine.

Do over, die over a million times.

Get on with it, dreaming, feeling and breathing.

This crazy, messed up thing called living.

She twitches in the her sagged, stretched and marked, itchy skin. 

Forever impatient, forever stubborn, forever.

Black Irish.

Unpredictable.

To live, breathe and exist inside the riff of a high pitched, blues blowing, screaming, guitar picking, melodic indigo blues.

To dance, wet, nude, and arms outstretched, swaying under the midnight, beautiful, dark blues sky, howling at the moon.

The stormier the weather the better, the light always comes back ’round.