Natural Coloring

When you dress conservatively and your hair is blue, people look at you.
Timid (but cool) people tell you they envy you.
Children on the playground believe you when you tell them you ate too many blue Jolly Ranchers.
Your mother, bless her, is scandalized.

"Natural Coloring" Discussion

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Kayden Abernathy's Journal Pages 35-37 Partially Recovered from the House Fire 6/21/2013

refuses to come over. I know what I know. The woman is a witch. She even looks like one. Seriously. She's got wild tangley hair and a hooked nose like something out of a fairytale and she is mean but it's not those things that makes me know she is a witch it is her eyes. They are full of evil. It's like the devil looking at you.

"Kayden Abernathy's Journal" Discussion

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Sister

You swallow sorrow
like knives slicing
down to your heart.

I want to gather you,
press the pieces together,
stanch the bleeding—

but I fear you like
a wounded animal.
Will you whimper or snarl,
snap or cower,
cringe at my touch?

I circle,
reach out,
offer my crumbs,

try to slip in
and shift the burden
sideways.



Author Bio
Merrijane earned a B.A. in English at BYU. She then served for 18 months in the Washington, D.C. North mission at the LDS Temple Visitors' Center. After returning, she married Jason Rice, and together they are raising a family of four boys in Kaysville. Currently, she works for Deseret Mutual in the Media Development department as a technical writer and editor. Her poetry has been published in the Ensign, New Era, Segullah, and Panorama (an annual publication of the Utah State Poetry Society). 

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"Sister" Discussion

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Dumb Idols

Frankincense and tobacco – a sweet scent and a bitter fume – the mingled offerings of earthen gods. Baal. Dagon. Isis. Athena. They all had their images, idols to remind us mere mortals of their presence. But the Living God, we are told, made living images - male and female - as vessels of the breath of heaven on Earth. It is part of human nature, part of the mud we’re made of, to honor and love the living images, reflections of Deity. I was born to worship my archetypal idols of Mother and Father, and from infancy I revered them, too innocent to know my error.