Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡

@pamelaelaela

Lifelong writer, aspiring author, mom of two. Bibliophile, cinephile, serial hobbyist. I'm talking graveyards of crochet needles & ukuleles.

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Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· 22d

Hello, #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 This #poetrybrew is a favorite of mine for hard times. “Everything Is Going to Be All Right” by Derek Mahon

Everything Is Going to Be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The lines flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

—Derek Mahon

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· 23d

I drew a lot of scenery inspiration for ResortWIP from places I traveled in my 20s. Used to snap a lot of photos and scribble in many tiny notebooks. I started digging through my old photos when I started writing & thought it might be fun to share some faves here and there. 📸 #photography #nature

Photo of a sunset in Santorini, Greece. Small tree silhouetted in the foreground. Blue-grey ocean and orange, yellow & pale blue sky in background, with a tiny crescent moon in the upper right part of the frame.

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· 23d

To socialize or not to socialize, that is the introvert’s question. Melody replays a past conversation as she contemplates Erik the concierge’s suggestion to attend a welcome event. 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. Loose vibes/synonym “pull” #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting

Too much small talk, she would have said. Let’s get room service and watch a movie.
To which Matt would have replied, Really? I mean, you sure? If that’s what you want, but I mean, could be fun to meet some people, not be so antisocial. But if you’re sure.
To which Melody would have hesitated, stared, looked away, stared again, then replied, Did you want to go?
To which Matt would have shrugged and replied, No one’s forcing you, babe. I just think it’s nice to be social, I mean, what’s the point of going places and not meeting people? But you know, whatever you want. You should be happy.
And Melody would have smiled and kissed his cheek and thrown on some makeup and a pair of strappy sandals, wondering whether the emphasis was on “you” or “should” or “happy,” and did it even matter, and finally dragged herself out, holding onto his arm for as long as he’d let her. Until the first cocktail, usually.
As Melody washed and dried her hair and pulled on a beachy dress, the phrase “no one’s forcing you” pranced through her head. It hooked arms with Erik's “what can be said to be mandatory?” and do-si-doed behind her eyes while she swiped on mascara. Eventually she went to the kitchen and poured herself a shot of the tequila she’d asked Erik to send over. It was smooth.
By the second, she was convinced, she was holding the reins. It was her decision where to point the horse, and that was all there was to it. Or maybe she simply was the horse, no reins, running free.
She snorted, the tequila stinging her nostrils, and sputtered a wet laugh at the delusion of never having been broken and saddled. Whatever. Fine. So she wasn’t a wild mustang. In any case, she was now the horse and the rider and the trainer and the owner and, what else, the farrier, too, goddammit, and whatever she decided was what would happen and no one else’s idea but her own.
She pulled the door behind her like the trigger on a starting pistol and canted toward the lounge.

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· 24d

Kiddos decided to build “train cities” the other day. I found it so funny how clearly their builds show their personalities, so I took a pic and annotated it. If you have a sibling or 2+ kids, you may very well recognize these Kid 1 / Kid 2 personality types. 😂

Two toy train tracks built side by side.

Upper right: Kid 1’s neat and quite orderly build. Segments with added text include (1) a propped-up hill labeled “balance tested by multiple train runs & approved”; (2) a series of bridges all to one side labeled “bridges belong here; (3) a series of tunnels all to the other side labeled “tunnels belong there”; (4) a curvy portion of track labeled “ooh swervy bits and (5) “tight turn! living dangerously!”

A slim gap between the two builds is labeled “the ‘I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU!’ pass.”

Lower left: Kid 2’s build of chaos. Segments with added text include (1) a pile of track and miniature playground equipment labeled “junkyard playground for hardened children”; (2) a colorful bridge connected to nothing and leading to a pile of rubble labeled “disconnected rainbow bridge to certain disaster”; (3) a curved piece of track propped up like a slide from the relatively neat train yard labeled “escape slide for bored trains”; (4) a tower of blocks stacked far too high and precariously placed between spiraling tracks labeled “tower of terror to topple onto unsuspecting trains”; (5) some wooden animals posed within the spiral labeled “‘people will love watching the lions kill their prey, momma’”; and (6) a self-explanatory “spiral of doom.”

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· 29d

Hello there, #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 Please enjoy this week’s #poetrybrew ☕️ No day but today. “Yes” by William Stafford

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake and look out — no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

—William Stafford

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jul 10

IT’S OUR VERY OWN @charliedeltawrites.bsky.social’s BDAY!!! Party time! 🥳🎉🎈 Suggested gift: An exclusive tidbit about your OC. Nothing spoilery, just fun! Or tell her your favorite thing about one of her OCs. Or both! 🎁 Pls enjoy these special cupcakes @nushdeco.bsky.social & I made, Charlie 😁❤️

A birthday banner for Charlie, featuring some oddly shaped cupcakes: (1) fox cupcake with a C candle; (2) Erlenmeyer flask cupcake with gene-ious frosting and an H candle; (3) tuber cupcake with a beet/radish topping and an A candle; (4) dragon cupcake with an R candle; (5) hugs-and-daggers cupcake with an L candle; (6) sunshine cupcake—for Ray and our human sunshine, Charlie—with cloudy frosting and an I candle; (7) lemon cupcake with an E candle. Drawn by yours truly and brought to life by the always brilliant Nush!

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jul 9

I haven’t written much for Raymond yet, but here’s what I know: he is small-minded, cranky, and unpleasant. But he’s also lived a life—and definitely has no qualms about giving Melody unsolicited advice. 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying 📚💙

Then, Raymond asked, “What’s the most undeniable force in the universe, d’you think?”

Melody released the same sort of breath, dismissive and impatient, that seemed to escape her whenever Raymond spoke. But she had grown up in a household where respect for elders was an unbreakable law and couldn’t ignore him.

“I dunno. Gravity?” she said.

“Gravity? Fine. Invisible, but unquestionable. So, then, what if I tried to prove that I could break it? What if I tried to break gravity by, say, crafting some sort of… warped vacuum box? And pushing in, I don’t know, atomic feathers? Through an insta-sealing hole? Well, what d’you say to that?”

“That it’s a fool’s errand.”

“But what if it’s inconvenient for me, personally, this whole gravity thing? Because, me, I dream of a cloud-like life, floating free.”

“Then you’ll find this planet to be a bit of a drag.”

Raymond lifted his chin, as if to laugh, but made no sound. He turned to face Melody, who suddenly found that the ash in the old man’s gaze had blown, and the stony coals of his eyes revealed embers.

“So, tell me, then,” he said, “what the hell’re you playing at trying to break a thing like love? Because, missy, if anything’s more undeniable than gravity, that’d be the one. Only a damn fool tries to stop it working.”

Melody forced a skeptical chuckle, but her brow furrowed as she looked back at him. At those mean, battle-scarred eyes. Eyes that knew, too well, the gift and pinch of life. The indelible joy. The crushing pain. And still—they shone.

“You sound awfully naive for such a tough old bastard,” she insisted.

The wind quieted as Raymond shook his head. “Life’s like that, don’t you know yet? Always working in circles. You get old, and that’s when you realize—it’s all them things you believed in looking into your mother’s eyes, things you got too scared to keep faith in along the way, that are the realest of what we have. Naive… that’s just a coward’s word for denying what’s true.”

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jul 8

Here is Huck enjoying a pup cup 🐶

Brown-and-white dog licking up whipped cream out of a paper espresso cup

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jul 8

Hello #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 💙📚 This cup of #poetrybrew is gritty, raw, and full of empathy and hope. TW ‼️ brief but visceral sexual references and allusions to trauma “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall” by Kim Addonizio

To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

—Kim Addonizio

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jul 7

Meet Melody’s group at Protea Villas: Joni just woke up; Raymond’s shooing people off his beach; Peggy wants a proper drink; and Melody’s trying to get her head on straight. 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. Strong vibes here, as Melody is 1️⃣/4️⃣ of her group. 😋 #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity 📚💙

“Hi,” she said in a sleepy sort of voice. “Guess we’re meeting out here?”

“Good afternoon, Ms. Bishop,” Erik said. “Thank you for stepping out—now I’ve got all four of you in one place.”

“Call me Joni,” she replied. “Um, is there some rule about beach access?”

Apparently Joni had heard her neighbor’s shoo-shouting from inside.

“Ah, not a rule, per se. Rather, a consideration we ask of all our guests. You see, at Protea Villas, we arrange your accommodations with your specific needs in mind. Your villas and groupmates have been carefully selected by our team to best facilitate the goals of your stay here.”

Peggy barked a laugh and stabbed a thumb in Raymond’s direction. “And you stuck me in a dry room next to this porcupine?”

Neither Raymond’s frown nor Erik's smile wavered.

“I assure you, Ms. Rico, we have made every effort to suit your needs as best we can. Now that you’re here to voice them directly, we are also happy to make any desired adjustments, within reason.”

“How?” Melody asked.

“Pardon, Ms. Nova?”

“Sorry, I mean, how do you know our, um, needs and goals?”

“From the survey you completed when you made your reservation, Ms. Nova. I’m sure it’s hard to recall—it will have been quite some time ago, given how quickly our villas book up.”

Melody gave a small nod, even though she had no recollection of this whatsoever. There was no need to admit to these strangers that her brain was too fried for her to remember what she had for lunch yesterday, let alone some form she filled out months ago. Likely while lying on the purple shag rug in Bonnie’s walk-in closet. Likely four margaritas deep.

“Because of the care we take in optimizing your stay,” Erik went on, “we kindly ask that you focus your time here on the people and places we have designated for your Protea experience.”

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jul 2

Good morning, afternoon, or evening, #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 Here’s some #poetrybrew that feels right for summertime ☀️ “How to Do Absolutely Nothing” by Barbara Kingsolver

How to Do Absolutely Nothing

Rent a house near the beach, or a cabin
but: Do not take your walking shoes.
Don’t take any clothes you’d wear
anyplace anyone would see you.
Don’t take your rechargeables.
Take Scrabble if you have to,
but not a dictionary and no
pencils for keeping score.
Don’t take a cookbook
or anything to cook.
A fishing pole, ok
but not the line,
hook, sinker,
leave it all.
Find out
what’s
left.

—Barbara Kingsolver

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jul 1

Someone wants to stay full time 🏖️ *sigh* one day, Huckleberry! ☺️

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 25

Hello there, #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 This cup of #poetrybrew is a reminder that you are always in good company with yourself. “Love After Love” by Derek Walcott

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

—Derek Walcott

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 24

Vibes ✨ Melody and Guy talk favorites. Seems like they’re hitting it off, but who knows where that leads? 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying 📚💙

“My turn,” she said.

His chin dipped in agreement. “What’ll it be? Favorite color? Food? Band?”

After a pause, she replied, “Tell me your favorite kind of silence.”

A hushed breath of laughter. “You’re a bit unexpected.”

“Only on vacation.”

Her smile sharpened into something slightly pained. Vacation Melody is so much more fun than regular Melody, Matt had often told her.

She sipped her drink again. “So?”

He thought for a moment, then answered, “The comfortable kind.”

It was an answer she might have expected, but her cheeks still warmed. “Rocking chairs and sunsets?”

“That’s it.” He drummed his fingers against the bar, inches from her own. “Can’t beat it.”

“Awed.”

“It was a good response, but no need to oversell it, Nova.”

She laughed low and shook her head. “My favorite kind of silence.”

“Awed silence?”

“Yeah. As in watching a dancer’s final leap. Or chancing upon a deer in the woods. As in… fireworks.”

He nodded slightly, his gaze fixed on hers. “Sunsets work there, too.”

She nodded back. “So we have some overlap.”

“Favorite part of a Venn diagram.”

“Oh, no question.”

“The overlap is the only sane answer.”

“Agreed.”

“Mm. Only one thing to do then, really.” He swallowed the rest of his drink. “Catch a sunset.”

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 22

This was what he wanted. Crustless sandwich. Very bougie 😂 but I thought “bread-skins” was kinda genius!

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich with crusts cut off

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 17

Huck this morning being asked if he’d like to go for a walk 🐶

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 17

Good morning/afternoon/evening, #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 Today’s #poetrybrew is on the topic of joy ✨ please do eat a whole loaf. “Don’t Hesitate” by Mary Oliver

Don’t Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

—Mary Oliver

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 16

A bit more of the dialogue between Melody and Peggy from a scene I’ve snipped before, and our first sighting of Guy. Different tree instead of “oak.” 😅 From my spec fic, ResortWIP 🪷 #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying 📚💙

“Darlin’, you get to be as old as I am, and eyes speak in epics, not enigmas.” Peggy waved a beringed hand. “Oversimplification, of course. It never is just a broken heart for women like us, is it now?” Melody wanted to ask what kind of women they collectively were, but Peggy continued, “But all the more reason to move right along, peach. Men are so rarely worth the tears. The salt don’t season ’em any. You can trust me there, too—I’ve had my fair share.”

“None of them stuck?”

“Oh, the sticky ones disappoint most of all! Now, women are a different story altogether, but men? Better to have a bit of fun with the ones that roll off like cheap oil on wet hands, wipe ’em off, move along. Right along.” Peggy patted Melody’s hand resting on the railing between them. “Him, for instance. Him, I reckon you could pour over ice and sip straight up through a straw.”

She lifted her eyebrows toward the beach, and Melody followed them to someone at the edge of the surf. His sleeves were rolled up over his elbows, and the tan of his arms reminded her of the leaves that pooled under the sycamore in October. She wondered what about him had captured Peggy’s attention. The line of his nose, perhaps, which was prominent, but aristocratic in a way that offset the haphazard knot of dark hair at the crown of his head. He stood straight-backed, a kind of nobility in his posture as well that felt at odds with the breezy, creased cotton of his shorts. There could be something compelling in the incongruity, to be sure.

Melody squinted. “Sipping isn’t on my mind much these days.”

“Well, gulping’s allowed! Less ladylike but more efficient, after all.”

Melody cracked a smile. “You’re incorrigible, Ms. Rico.”

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 10

Hello #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 The #poetrybrew this week is for the nature lovers 🕊️ “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

—Wendell Berry

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 9

Melody, who hasn’t been away from home much, thinks travel is inherently transformative; Guy isn’t so sure. (Oh yeah, she meets a guy named Guy, here he is, and how that name is pronounced is up to you! Tough decisions…) 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity 📚💙

“Can you really stop it from meaning something?”

A smile traced his lips, but his jaw worked a moment, as if the expression strained him. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can’t. Maybe it always turns into something, eventually.”

“But?”

He glanced at her, and even as skepticism tweaked one corner of his mouth, his eyes were shaded with apology. And at this, Melody’s heart pinched. At feeling like something precious once again. Something fresh and new. Something to protect from the harsh light.

“Well, I don’t know it all, but…” He trailed off and turned a pebble over in his hand. “I’ve just met so many people who are happy to live in a single room, you know? Inside the four walls of their own experience. Even when they go somewhere else, that’s where they really stay. In that room.” He tossed the pebble into the passing water, and they watched it sink. “Even when they say things like ‘oh, wow, that’s so interesting,’ and ‘hm, never considered that,’ they’re not really…metabolizing any of it. They’re just acknowledging that you exist, somewhere out there, outside their reality, someplace irrelevant. But, ultimately, all they want is to keep living in their room. Unencumbered. Non-obligated. Safe in the stasis of their tailormade truth.”

It caught Melody off-guard. Until then, Guy, with his slow, gentle smile and steady eyes, had seemed to her like something born from the earth itself. Mellow and unpolluted. His warmth, his kindness, quietly pervasive, like morning dew. In the landscape of him that had formed in her head, she didn’t know where to place this newfound cynicism.

And she wondered, also, where hers had gone to hide. And when. And why.

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 4

RIP Marjane Satrapi 🖤🤍 If you haven’t read Persepolis yet or seen the film, I highly recommend both.

A page from Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis.

Top panel: B&W illustration of bodies thrown by an explosion, keys dangling around their necks. The text reads “The key to paradise was for poor people, thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks.”

Bottom panel: B&W illustration of teenagers dancing wildly at a party, their bodies mimicking the shapes of those in the top panel. The text reads “Meanwhile, I got to go to my first party. Not only did my mom let me go, she also knitted me a sweater full of holes and made me a necklace with chains and nails. Punk rock was in. I was looking sharp.”

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 4

Happy Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈 #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers! 📚💙 This week’s #poetrybrew comes from one of my favorite LGBTQ+ poets and warrior women. “A Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde

A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

(Poem continues in next image)

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

—Audre Lorde

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 2

I go overboard on description, so this needs editing 😬 but here’s Melody riding along on a tour bus, taking in the sights. 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying 📚💙

They drove past stucco houses in tropical confectionary colors, doors flung open wide. Melancholy cows huddled under the shade of a single overworked tree. Windmills waving three-armed warnings. Fence posts painted white with crimson tips, like an eager battalion of matchsticks. Rolling hills for miles, dotted with countless trees—a palette of powdered cumin, spring peas, and plush velvet. Spindle-fingered vultures soaring, circling, ready to clean.

They neared their destination, and the sights grew closer, more intimate. A man sitting in a rattan chair on his lawn peered at them disapprovingly as they passed. They slowed to let a turtle cross, and Melody smiled at a little girl bouncing a red ball off her forehead, aiming to kick it, missing, reattempting. As the bus sped away, Melody’s head swiveled to watch out the rear window, her gaze holding the girl in frame. The bounce, the empty kick, the scramble. Trying and trying and trying again. The girl kept at it, until the bus had gone all the way down the long road and she disappeared below a curve of asphalt, head jutting forward like a fishing bird.

Melody turned back. They’d come to another stop. She startled at a shock of white out her window—a lone mare in a deep green thicket. The barbed wire fence containing her was barely visible, and she looked neither out of place nor like she belonged. She licked her leg and blinked. Placid, or numb.

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· Jun 1

One of the best things that happened in recent memory is I discovered there exists a species of deer in Korea called gorani which… well, just look 🥹💚

A picture of a male gorani, or Korean water deer, with a field in the background. The deer is a warm golden brown and certifiably adorable with big ears, innocent eyes, and a rounded black nose. Oh, and he has little tusks protruding down from his mouth that make him appear as though he is performing vampire cosplay.

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· May 29

Melody remembers a moment with her son at a water park. 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying 📚💙

She hated things that made her stomach jump. Matt had always been the one to take him on those sorts of rides. But Matt wasn’t there, wouldn’t be there, and not being an utter coward at amusement parks, she told herself, was only one of the many ways she’d have to learn to be brave for Theo. So she’d stood in line and feigned excitement. And when Theo’s nerves shook him silent as they reached the gushing water at the top, she’d squeezed his shoulders and chortled about how much fun it was going to be.

The raft was made for four, so they were seated at opposite corners. The worst part of this was that her weight compared to Theo’s chicken-nugget frame ensured that she would go down the whole ride backwards, unable to see the curves or drops ahead. All she could do was lean back, plaster on a grin, and pretend every scream was born of sheer delight.

But all she saw was Theo’s face. It was all there was to see. She could still remember the exact moment when she knew the big drop was coming—the way his eyes flared wide, jaw slackening the same way it did at the climax of a superhero movie. She smiled so hard, her cheeks quivered. She shrieked loud enough that the sound scraped her throat before she flipped it into a laugh. She broke a nail twisting her fingers around the handlebars.

So much of motherhood was like that. Bad theater with a gullible audience. Playing as if you understood what was to come, how it would all end up okay, when all you could really do was watch that little face and pray with crippled hands that, somehow, you were making things a little better for them.

But you were still on the ride, just a body’s length ahead. Flying blind. Terrified.

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· May 28

Hello, #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 Hope you enjoy this week’s #poetrybrew ☕️✨ I love how she uses end-stopped lines in the first stanza vs enjambed lines in the last 🖤 “For What Binds Us” by Jane Hirshfield

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

—Jane Hirshfield

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· May 25

Couldn’t let “rain” go by without a Danbi snip! ⛈️ Danbi meets Senna and Cyrus, one of whom she tried to help out of a fight and one of whom wind-blasted her into a wall. Auspicious beginnings? ✨ From my YA fantasy, The Kindler. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying 📚💙

“Why would you assume I was attacking her?!”

“You had your hands on her.”

“Do you also regularly attack random passersby who are hugging?” I try to straighten up. “Or shaking hands, high-fiving, walking arm-in-arm, dancing a tango?”

His lips pull askew and land at a dimple like an exclamation mark. “Are random passersby frequently performing tangos where you come from?”

“Cyrus,” the girl grits out, “now is not the time for playful rejoinders.” She looks at me. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I’m Senna, by the way. What’s your name?”

I glance at her, a bit reluctantly. “Danbi.”

She narrows her eyes in apparent thought. “That’s…Korean, isn’t it? Something to do with rain?”

My eyebrows lift in surprise. “‘Sweet rain’ would be the literal translation.”

“I’ve got a thing for languages. Names especially.” She smiles and nods like she knew all along. “It suits you.”

Cyrus snorts. “I’m sure she’ll report your approval to her parents posthaste.”

I glower at him for the needless snark, even if it wasn’t directed at me.

“Would you—?!” Senna slices her hand at her neck, glaring at him, before turning back to me. “Anyway, Danbi, you were right. I should’ve stopped kicking that asshat. I swear, my brother is not actually a complete idiot, he just has an overdeveloped reflex for perceived threats. A lifetime of protecting his helpless twin sister”—she puts her hands up—“did all sorts of weird damage.”

“Not that weird,” Cyrus mutters. “Or damaged.”

“Beg to differ,” I jab, carefully stretching my back.

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· May 15

Subbing “name” for “title.” Meet Peggy Rico, a sassy old lady who takes a liking to Melody. 🪷 From my spec fic, ResortWIP. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmQuerying 📚💙

The woman let out a dry laugh, chased by a sigh and a swig. “Guess I just mean, why worry on vacation? You take a vacation, you ought to vacate properly, good sense and all. Hardly worth the hassle any other way, and you can trust me on that. Vacations have been my primary occupation for more than several decades now.”

Something about the way she enunciated “decades” made Melody grin. Aside from the silk and leather, there was a sumptuousness to the woman’s speech that Melody might ordinarily have found off-putting. Every gold-leafed syllable spilled forward with an extra trill. But in conjunction with the woman’s unfussy demeanor, the effect was disarming.

“It’s right in the name, peach.” When Melody looked at her in question, she said, “Peggy Rico. Rico as in rich. And quite! In all things, lucky dame I am. And what do you go by?”

“Mel. Melody Nova.”

Peggy chuckled. “A song and a star! Well, I’d go on and bet that’s just what it ought to be. And who in his right mind went on and broke your heart, peach like you?”

“What? No one! That’s not—I’m not—it’s…” Melody scrunched her nose. “Brokenhearted? That’s how I come off?”

“Darlin’, you get to be as old as I am, and eyes speak in epics, not enigmas.”

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· May 13

Good morning, #writingcommunity and #poetry lovers 📚💙 Here’s your weekly #poetrybrew ☕️✨ and here’s to taking it all. 🍃 “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

—Ada Limón

Pamela Jeong 🫜💙🧡@pamelaelaela· May 12

Mine too! So many this time of year and they are too cute for words 😭 this one came up really close