Ending My Week with Cream Pie

at the start of my work week,
tears were shed.
then, came the cream pies –
but, they did not stop my cries.
instead, they multiplied my woes
and made me want to lash out
the hurt i was feeling inside.

If you think this post about cream pie is all about making or eating one, then you are wrong. Based on the poem above, this post is mostly going to be a rant against cream pies or about something directly related to them. But, since I love pies, especially strawberry cream pie, you might find a recipe of my favorite pie below. Before we go to that though, let me tell you about my horrible cream pie experience this week.

My Cream Pie Experience

I manage and edit the blogs of a well-known talent resource site in the US. Because these blogs are directly related to entertainment, my team and I prefer to produce entertainment-related posts for them. However, the owner of the company has a different idea about what works for his site.

He believes that just because desserts and animals are trending online, these would also be great for our main blog. So, instead of focusing on articles that will cater more to our kind of audience, he is asking us to churn out posts about amazing animals and delectable desserts.

Sundays’ Simple Pleasures

of children laughing,
their beautiful echoes
coloring the summer air.
of fragrant cooking
wafting in the warm breeze,
teasing palates and appetites.
Sundays at home.

Fish Paksiw with Carrots

 

Sunday is almost always the best day of the week for me. Although my weekends start on Saturdays, it is always on Sundays when the whole family gets to converge and bond. So, no matter how sick I am, I always make it a point to get up on a Sunday. And, dressed in my pajamas with my messy top knot, I stay in the sala (living room), the main room that holds the heart of our Sundays together.

Memories of an Easter Sunday

of Easter Sundays and egg hunts
and time spent together as one –
memories of days long gone.

It is Easter Sunday, and I am hunched over my laptop, working on this post. I hear birds singing and the TV’s muted sound in the background. Outside, the sun is beating so hard into the ground that you can almost hear the soil crack as it dries up. And, the hammock lies brittle, swinging alone – all by its lonesome, aching for someone to keep it company.

Meal Times with Family Are the Best Times

a glass of orange juice – freshly squeezed
and kissed by the morning sun.
a plate of pancakes – made with love
and served by a mother’s hands.
a table of upturned faces – tinged pink
and bathed with smiles of pure delight.
a meal shared together – enjoyed heartily
over laughter that echoes ‘til the coming of night.

For me, my family is not just my husband, my kids and I. It also extends to my parents, my brothers and sisters and their families as well as my aunties, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. And, we are a close-knit bunch.

The Poetry of Cooking for Love

so, when I cook,
I do it with a heart full of love –
for to do it without joy in my heart
is akin to courting disaster.

I don’t get to cook often. Because of the time constraints brought upon me by my working schedule and the fact that I still have to get my own baking equipment, it is very rare that I get the time to buy the kind of ingredients I want to concoct into a dish my family would love. But, when the opportunity presents itself, I throw myself into cooking with the same passion that I show towards my poetry, my writing and my art.

A Poem a Day

It has been a while since I last posted here. I can name a lot of reasons for abandoning this blog, but I’d rather not. I just want to start fresh today and move forward.

Last February 11, I posted a poem on Facebook. Then, I posted another the next day and the next, until I realized that I could not wait to write a poem to post every day. Given the slump I was in for the past months (I won’t even go to how long I have lost touch with my creativity), this was quite refreshing for me. So, I came to a decision. I will start a challenge for myself that I named, “A Poem a Day”.

While others have 365-day projects that got them posting photos everyday, I now have something just like it. My very own challenge, but aligned to what I can do and what I know best – writing poems. Just writing about this puts a smile on my face and I am so looking forward to making this challenge work.

Before I end this blog post though, I want to point out the very start of recovering my imagination and creativity. Yes, I started posting a poem every day on Facebook on the 11th of this month, but this was not the first poem I wrote this year. It was this:

First poem of the year

So, I’d like to pay tribute to this poem, which sparked my way back into creativity this year by embarking on this challenge of writing a poem every day for 365 days and beyond. And, with this I say, welcome back to me and to days of doing something I enjoy very much.

P.S. I will be posting all the poems I have posted so far on Facebook here and all the others that I will be writing from hereon out.

The Sunny Yellow Tricyle and the Big Black Bag

– years after the sunny yellow tricycle and the big black bag came this kiss –

It was 1986. I was eight years old then and more than just a bit on the chubby side. Okay, I was more than chubby, I was huge. At that age though, I was already trained to go to school by myself and it was 12 kilometers away from where I lived.

Every morning on a school day, I will wait at the corner of our village for a ride. Because my school was quite far, I had to ride a tricycle to the center of the city before I can ride a jeepney that would bring me there.

Commuting then was not as easy as it is now. So, you can just imagine my relief when a sunny yellow tricycle pulled up in front of me one morning with its driver kindly telling me to get on-board.

Not a lot of drivers do that, but this driver was different and he didn’t tell me to put my big black rectangular box of a bag at the back like other drivers did. Instead, he allowed me to bring it with me inside and put on my lap, which appeased my young heart, which was always scared of losing my bag and my precious school belongings inside. Bag theft was rampant then.

That very morning though, all thoughts about bag theft and even my relief at catching an easy ride flew out the window when I noticed the pretty girl already inside the tricycle. She was about my age and was sleeping on the left side of the wide passenger seat.

When I got on-board though, she woke up and gave me a stare of disdain for disrupting the sleep she was trying to get before she gets to school.

However, I did not notice her frown. I was oblivious to her discomfort as she scooted over to the farthest side of the seat to accommodate me and my big black bag. I did not mind her annoyance. All I could think about was how fair she looked and how soft her cheeks seemed to be. I also noticed that she had these wonderfully clear dark eyes that one could use as mirrors.

So, this happened every school day morning. I would squeeze myself into the seat and stare at the sleeping girl happily, even if I somehow knew that she did not welcome my presence.

Every day, I looked forward to seeing the sunny yellow tricycle because I knew it would mean I would have another chance of seeing that sleeping girl with her rosy cheeks and fair skin. Although it was years later that I became sure that she was my first crush, I considered those moments when I was in the seat of that tricycle with her as the happiness that always started my school days.

Ten years later, that girl became my first girlfriend and five years later, my wife. I could not explain the mystery that led me to see the pretty girl inside the sunny yellow tricycle, whom I crushed with my big black bag, again.

There is one thing I do know though. That girl with the clear dark eyes, fair skin and rosy cheeks was fated to become my destiny. She is now with me in this journey called life where we are bound together by love.

*Note: Although I wrote this story, this is the account of my husband of how our love story started.*

Hello and Welcome to Living a Soulful Life :)

Hi. 🙂

My name is Leigh and although this is not my first attempt at blogging, it is the first time that I will let you into my life as me, as a real living and breathing person and not as an events coordinator or under a pseudonym.

This blog will be filled with poems, stories and articles about life and living. You might think that you’ve come across many blogs such as this and move on. That is just okay with me. You have your own thoughts, your own views. But, if you can just spare a little of your time to read a poem or two, then maybe, just maybe, I can somehow make a connection with you. Then, who knows what will happen after that…

My posts here will not all necessarily be my writings, but they will be about something that you can identify with as a person.

I hope you will give me and my blog a chance to make a connection with you, so we can all make the journey of living a soulful life together.

Here’s to living a soulful life! 🙂