Tag: writer

musician

Stranger Things Broke my Heart in the Best Way

Kelly Rogers

Stranger Things took me on an adventure with my children back to my childhood and then broke my heart in the best way with a beautiful, flawed goodbye. The tender years of my kids aligned with the children on the show. We faced changing friendships, first loves, and grief with the show’s characters, 1980s old style…no mobile phones and devices, no socials, and a worldview limited to a D&D campaign.

While the plot was sometimes messy and the connections were dizzying, the show never failed as a time machine and stayed true to the characters even in the darkest, most confusing moments. My kids and I had our favorites, with Derek as a late entry pulling on our heartstrings and inspiring humor in what had been a humorless year IRL. My kids grew up on this show, and I was okay with that. Fortitude and heroics in the service of friendship and love are life’s greatest lessons. Loyalty is another one. You don’t leave your people behind, and mothers are bad a$$es when pushed to their limits. I grew with the show, too.

It was the right time for the story to end, but with it, so did the portal it provided to my youth and that of my kids. And this is where I find myself heartbroken. Writers of shows and books get to create portals to other places, times, and lives. This is a power. I am grateful to the Duffer brothers for allowing me to share this story and my childhood with my kids. Maybe I have the power, too, to preserve memories of that time, or maybe I can make new worlds and portals equally compelling. It’s the end of this story, but there are always stories to tell that shift perceptions, make you fall in love (or hate) with characters, and potentially change your life. Stranger Things was never perfect, but it was powerful in all the right ways. It’s never goodbye when characters and stories find their way into your heart.

fiction, writer, writing

Artist’s Date One: The Beauty in Ordinary Objects

Kelly Rogers

Each week I must have an Artist’s Date with myself as part of the Artist’s Way journey. I wanted to go outside and find a story in pictures.

Fast forward. I’m in a hotel, and it is frigid outside. These are the photos that resulted. I find the ordinary to be extraordinary when seen through the right lens.

poetry, writer, writing

winter soul

Kelly Rogers

I am the last piece of tinsel clinging to the fir that’s about to return to the earth

I am the first bud fighting activation by the sunshine I know is forgetting the last snow

I am the shade, the single cloud, the arch of a tree, providing respite from the dry heat

I am the first leave to turn on the branch and the last to fall, stretching on the way down towards peace on frosted ground

I am the first crystal to form in the sky, willingly joining other crystals, ready to find my place in a snow angel

I am a winter soul, an arctic fox, a counter of stars under the frigid night sky

musician

Tired

Kelly Rogers

When you are the kind of tired sleep won’t fix

And your second hand is stuck but it still ticks

When you’ve lost your bookmark in a breeze

And you need a prayer after life has brought you to your knees

When you try to drive forward while in park

And you are in a story that has no discernible arc

Look up to the sky, you are kissed by the sun

Look down at your feet where two puppies run

You are here now, a gift, tired or not

Breathe it in, breathe it out, give it all you’ve got

musician

Winter’s Wind

Kelly Rogers

A thousand black-winged dots above the horizon

Cut through the clouds

On an icicle blowing wind

Forming glass of water, nature’s sculpture

Shall they reach the sun above five more horizons?

Or shall they fall into the winter of the soul ?

Their dark wings collapsing in peace

For respite in the silence minus the whistle of that very same wind

poetry, writer, writing

It Cannot

Kelly Rogers

It cannot take the glow of Spring’s first warm light on my winter skin.

It cannot tilt my heart on the axis it spins.

It cannot lay claim to the adventures of my mind.

It, therefore, will not win.

It will lay bare our faults and our fears.

It has no soul. About nothing it cares.

It will ravage the old and young the same.

It will expose our mistakes and immortal shame.

And when it’s darkness towers over us, and a last stand remains,

Rush boldly we will, shedding its chains.

It cannot, it will not, it should not transpire,

A dimming of our humanity’s fire.

It cannot, it will not, it should not conspire,

For we are glass blown into steal, forged from this same fire.

musician, poetry, writer, writing

Today

Kelly Rogers

I can still feel the sun’s heat on my face,

even when fear wrestles with grace.

I can still see love in another’s eyes,

while facing the darkness of demise.

I can still water a flowering bud,

as my emotions get swept away by the flood.

And I can still believe today will be tomorrow,

when my heart mends from subsuming sorrow.

musician, poetry, story, writer, writing

The Virus

Kelly Rogers

In the quiet of the night

In the hole of the soul

In the alley where it lived

Under the moon covered in clouds

The sadness it did bring,

Pulling the stitches of the world

Infecting the tears of many

While living in the body untold

Through the darkness it spread

Killing wisdom with a stone

But through it all a tiny light did glow

And with it, brought hope

Small and grand gestures brought healing

Like vitamins from the sun

And the virus disappeared

Into the cave from which it did come

For humanity is the strongest medicine of all