Silver

The woman’s name was Etta Mae LeBlanc, though most folks just called her Etta, or when she got riled up, that wild LeBlanc girl. She lived on the edge of the bayou where the moss hung low enough to brush your hair if you didn’t duck, and the air always smelled faintly of sweet rot and rain.

Her hair had gone silver too early …long and soft like moonlight on still water. But it suited her. Folks said it matched the old soul behind her mischievous grin. Etta was a wild child at heart …ornery, barefoot more often than not, stubborn as the roots of the old cypress. She’d been raising herself in one way or another since she was ten, when her father drowned on a fog-thick morning, his boat never making it back from the far side of the bay.

Her mother, Josephine, had done her best …though “best” was a word that meant something different in those days. Three men came and went, each one a little worse than the last. Josephine had a way of choosing men like she chose dresses …beautiful at first glance, but stitched with unraveling seams. Etta learned early that love could be loud, could break plates, could vanish in the middle of the night. So when it came time for her to love, she loved hard and reckless, as if trying to rewrite what she’d seen growing up.

Her family was split clean in two …like a pecan cracked down the middle. Her father’s kin were Bayou Royalty: bankers, restaurant owners, members of the country club where they still whispered about the “poor choices” her mother made. Her mother’s side, though …they were the real folks: cotton farmers, mill workers, people who smelled like earth and sweat and knew how to fix what broke. Etta carried both sides in her blood — grace and grit, polish and fire, and the war between them played out quietly behind her eyes every time she looked in the mirror.

These days, Etta lived in a weather-worn farmhouse at the end of an old gravel road. By day she worked in town …part-time at the parish office, where she filed papers, answered phones, and kept a candy dish full for whoever wandered in. By evening, she came home to her small patch of land: a few goats, a stubborn rooster, rows of okra and tomatoes, her young son, Lyle, who had his daddy’s tall slender physique and his mama’s wild streak, and her daughter, LuLu, with her mama’s laugh and her daddy’s quick wit.

Life wasn’t easy, but it was hers.

Then came the man from up north.

He arrived one late spring afternoon in a dust-coated pickup, moving into the old cottage across the road …the one that had been empty since Old Man Dupree passed. He was quiet, broad-shouldered, and out of place …a New England kind of handsome, with hands that didn’t yet know how to work a shovel. His name was Cal Whitmore. Folks whispered that he was running from something …a divorce, a scandal, maybe just the noise of his own head.

At first, Etta didn’t pay him much mind. Outsiders came and went. But Cal was patient. He’d stop by with fresh coffee or offer to fix her broken fence post. He learned the rhythm of her world …when to talk, when to stay quiet, how to listen to the frogs sing after rain. Before long, they were friends in the truest sense …laughing under the stars, sharing secrets neither of them meant to.

Cal saw something in Etta …something strong and soft all at once. And soon enough, he wanted more. But Etta had learned that love could turn on you like a cornered animal. So when Cal reached for her hand one evening, she pulled away. Not harshly, but with that quiet fear that comes from knowing how deep hurt can run.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” she told him, eyes shining in the twilight.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I’d sure like to find out.”

She thought, yeah, that’s what all the men say to me.

That quiet charm, that easy smile, that promise that he’d be different. They always said that …right before they disappeared or turned cold. Cal wasn’t any different, she told herself. But still… she liked his company.

He never pressed her. Never made her feel small. He just showed up …steady as the tide, dependable as the sunrise. Fixing what broke, mending what bent. When her fence leaned, he propped it. When her old Chevy refused to start, he got her to work himself. When the storm rolled through one August night, he stood on her porch till the thunder passed, just to be sure the roof held.

So she kept him around. That seemed fair.

She made sure he stayed fed … a pot of gumbo here, a peach cobbler there. She told herself it was the least she could do, a neighborly kindness for a man who’d done more than his share. But every time he sat at her kitchen table, boots dusty from work, eyes soft with gratitude, something in her chest fluttered … a quiet, dangerous warmth she didn’t quite trust.

Everyone in town told her she was crazy for not giving him a chance.

“Girl, if you don’t take that man before someone else does, you’re gonna regret it,” Miss Ida at the feed store would say, wagging her finger. Even Father Duval, old and sharp-eyed as a heron, mentioned that Cal seemed “good people.”

And Cal, well …he didn’t chase her. He just stayed.

He showed up at her door with bags of feed, or a new latch for the chicken coop, or wildflowers he swore he didn’t pick on purpose. He never asked for much more than her company, and that was somehow worse … because she started to want to give him everything.

Then one late autumn evening, when the bayou air turned cool and the frogs quieted down early, she decided she was tired of fighting herself.

She wore her hair loose that night …silver ribbons catching the last light of sunset … and when Cal came by, she asked, almost shy, “You hungry?”

He smiled. “Always.”

That’s how their first date started …not at some restaurant, but right there on her back porch. Two plates of catfish, a bottle of wine, and a soft tune playing on the old radio. They talked till the moon climbed high and the crickets filled the silence between their words. When he reached across the table to brush a stray curl from her cheek, she didn’t pull away this time.

From then on, they were inseparable.

He loved the way she made him laugh …that wild, reckless laugh that could startle birds right off the power lines. And she… she loved how safe she felt around him. Like maybe she didn’t have to be the strong one all the time.

He didn’t try to fix her. He just stood beside her while she figured out how to let herself be loved without losing her freedom.

They found a rhythm … quiet mornings with coffee on the porch, afternoons spent tending to the garden, long evenings by the water where he’d play his guitar and she’d hum along. The boy, Lyle, took to him too …started calling him “Cal-Man,” as if that were a superhero’s name. And for a while, it really did feel like peace had finally come to the LeBlanc place.

But peace is a fragile thing in the bayou.

Storms always come.

✨to be continued✨

Smoke

 ✨her heart✨

She walked the dark forest he led her through, where the cypress knees rose like old bones and owls marked the hours with their cries. His love was a snare, a net cast in shadows, and she, bound by hope, followed his trail.

He carved for her a life that any woman might dream of…a hearth fire glowing, fields planted straight, a home where laughter could take root. But these were hollow blueprints, words without breath, for he never intended to fulfill them.

Not because he was a bad man, but because he did not know how to be loved, for he did not love himself. He loved from a place still bleeding, a boy wounded long ago, not understanding that even the bear, fierce in claw and muscle, can also be gentle.

Still, she bled on the thorns of his choosing, and she stayed until the night itself taught her feet to carry her away. Now she stands on the far shore, her moccasins pressed in river mud, watching from a distance.

She sees him there, heart sagging like a storm-broken willow, still bowing before the crooked idols he built with his own hands. And she wonders… does he think of her still? 

Does her name rise in him like smoke from pinewood, or does she come only as a thorn, a ghost rustling through reeds at dusk? Does he turn over the thought of who she was to him, and what he lost when he let her go?

She no longer dreams of them together… not because the dreams have left her, but because she forbids them to return. Too sharp is the ache. She lives with questions the wind cannot answer, fantasies that never rooted, dreams that will never bear fruit.

Yet a sting remains…that he could have been more, the man she saw dwelling behind his eyes, the man he never chose to become.

No matter how wide a path she carved for him, with love, with sacrifice, with belief, he always chose another route. That sting smolders still, quiet as a coal under ashes.

And yet, the old ones say forgiveness is not forgetting. It is the setting down of a stone so one may walk farther. So she laid hers at the river’s edge, watched the ripples carry it away to the place where water meets sky.

Above all, she hopes joy will find him. Not the false mirages of men, but a happiness real and bone-deep, the kind that loosens the shoulders, and frees the spirit.

For she is free …as the heron rising from the marsh, as the pine that bends but does not break, as the river that remembers its own way home.

And that is forgiveness.

One-Sided 🤲

She sat with the river that day, listening to its steady hymn. The water knew her secrets; how she had loved him with both hands open, how she bent like willow branches to every wind of his desire. She gave, and she gave, and she gave, until even the cypress roots seemed to ache on her behalf.

It was one-sided. She knew that now. His love was smoke, hers was fire. He had never truly loved her, not the way her body, her prayers, her barefoot devotion had loved him. And yet… what she gave was real. She knew this, because the ache was real, the sting was real. And some stings do not fade; they settle into bone like river silt, carried always, heavy and holy.

Still, she whispered blessings on the wind. She hoped he was happy. She hoped he was healthy. She hoped the earth would cradle him the way she once did. Even as her chest remained hollowed by absence, she planted seeds of hope in soil where his roots would never grow.

It’s too heavy… to allow her self to believe his love had been true. That wound pulsed like a wasp sting that would not heal; a reminder etched into her, both curse and consecration. So she sat and she talked to the water, clutching her heart. 

The river kept singing, the trees kept swaying, and she, broken-hearted but unbroken, let the earth teach her how to love again… this time for herself. She would choose to be alone, if ever given the opportunity to be half loved again, because that was a pain she refused to pass down generation to generation.

He will remain a dream… a childish wish …that his love would move heaven, hell, and earth to be by her side for the rest of their lives. But as he always said… “wish in one hand, spit in the other.”

Petty 💁‍♀️

 ✨ She deserved better.✨

Another woman’s hands on the skin that should have been sacred ground between them. She felt it and it felt like a thorn in her chest, a betrayal so casual he laughed at her.

It wasn’t rage, it was the trembling clarity of love saying, “This is mine to name. This is my boundary.”

When she spoke, her voice carried the ache of boundaries crossed, the tremor of a heart saying,

“This is not love, this is loss.”

And what did he give her? 

Not remorse. Not even shame. Just the spit of words meant to cut her small. He laughed, shrugged, spat out a careless blade of words:

“If you’re that petty, you can leave.”

Petty. As if commitment were small. As if respect was free. As if love should wear chains of silence and surrender. As if fidelity is a joke. As if devotion should be a one-way street paved with her silence. As if respect were a trinket too cheap to carry.

No, she wasn’t petty. She was awake. She was done bargaining with crumbs while he gorged himself on her loyalty. She was done bowing at an altar where the offering was always her.

So she stood. And her standing was fire. She walked. And her walking was thunder. Not in fury, but in clarity. She gathered her worth like wildflowers, her dignity like river stones, her spirit like the hawk in flight. And she left.

She left because she honors herself. Because the river inside her does not run dry for a man who cannot cup his hands with reverence. Because she will not shrink her soul to fit inside his absence of respect. 

Not because she was petty, but because she was powerful. Not because she lacked love, but because she carried it. For herself, first, and for the truth that no woman should shrink to fit inside a coward’s absence of respect.

The bayou remembers. It holds the echo of her footsteps, not as retreat, but as a woman claiming her worth. And the mud did not swallow her— it crowned her. The water mirrored her strength.

She did not leave in pettiness. She left in power. She left in truth. And she will never again apologize for refusing to stay where love was already gone. 

She walked away… and in walking, she was free.

And if respect looks like pettiness … then petty she shall be.

Photos are Forever 📸

 ✨revelation✨

They do not simply hang in frames or glow on screens… they carve themselves into the mind like initials in an old oak, etched so deep the bark grows around them, yet never swallows them whole.

A photo does not flinch. It does not backpedal or swear on its mother’s grave. It does not dress itself up in excuses. It simply stares back… quiet, undeniable, like a preacher’s wife catching you at the liquor store on Sunday morning.

And when it is the picture you prayed you would never see…  it wounds the heart in a way no blade could manage, cutting deep, carving its way into chambers that once held hope like a living thing.

But the waters of truth always follow the image. They open the eyes wide… pouring out like tears from a soul that begged God for a different ending.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when that picture shatters your heart into a thousand pieces, it forces you to see things as they were all along… not as you dreamed them to be.

Those caverns of hurt become winding rivers. And as the tears flow, they begin to fill the hollow spaces until the heart, heavy with truth, finds its weight shifting toward freedom.

Because tears are holy water when they fall from an awakened soul. They wash away the cobweb lies, they rinse the rust from your faith, they carve new channels for grace to run through.

Liars will always lie… bless their black little hearts. But the truth will always outshine them. And when you have cried it clean, you will see the picture for what it really is: not the proof of what you lost, but the marker of where you began to heal.

And to the liar:  she sees you now, clear as a cypress silhouette at sunset. No shadow can cover what the light has already found. Every pixel, every line, every glance caught in that frame is a truth you can never rewrite.

It will sit in her memory like a stone in still water quiet, heavy, unmoving. Not to haunt her, but to remind her. Liars will always lie. But she will always remember.

Moon & Rattlesnake 🌙

✨A Creek poetic legend of grief, betrayal, and the songs of serpents✨

They say she used to walk among us. The Moon.

Not just a light in the sky, but a woman with silver skin and a voice like river lullabies… low and lonesome, full of secrets. She moved like dusk, soft and sure, carrying the scent of magnolia and mourning.

And lawd, she loved that man. A warrior carved from cedar and fire, with a jaw that could slice lies in two and eyes that saw too much.

She gave him her light. Wrapped it ‘round his shoulders like a shawl stitched from starlight and bone. Sang to his scars, bathed his rage in quiet. She believed him even when his truth came with splinters.

But one summer night, when the cypress were heavy with ghosts and the frogs held their breath, he laid his promises at another woman’s feet. He kissed her beneath the same moon that had once watched him swear forever.

And the Moon… she broke. 

Not with thunder. 

Not with fire. 

But with silence.

She turned her face away from the earth, packed her sorrow into shadow, and rose. High. Higher. Until she became untouchable. Cold, yes. But only because warmth cost too much.

And the Rattlesnake, her old protector… the one who once slept at her feet curled like a question… he watched her go. He slithered through the cane brake, traced her light on still water, and wept the only way he knew how: with song.

That’s why he rattles. Not to scare you. But to remember her. Every shake of his tail is a hymn. Every coil a memory. And when he rises to strike, it’s not rage… it’s grief. Because the Moon was his kin, his keeper, his queen. And she’s never coming back down.

So if you see him on the trail… don’t run. Don’t scream. Just bow your head and whisper:

“I, too, have loved someone who forgot my light.”