Updated 2/7/2025 (Updated again – 7/1/2025)
This body of writing springs out of a story, the story was definitely inspired. Visiting Foster Care Centers, meeting brilliant young people and speaking with them definitely helped spark the origins of this inspired story.
It is categorically a ~
Character driven, poetically phrases, prosaic-styled, Fictional-Non Fiction.
It is an Unreal- but emotionally laced, in many sections of this story, the Psychological inner-workings of the main character are fully depicted and exposed. This calls for the readership to be similarly involved, uncomfortable at times, this writing is possibly too -realistic.
All that being said, it is still a work of writing that needs more work. Nonetheless, I dearly appreciate you reading this story:
A Life Story; The Life of
Jasmine
The Sunflower Garden
She wakes to wonder…
…
These days …..
— when -she wakes,
she lays almost motionless.
She lays- –
– still —
She buries her head
Covers her hair even in the pillows that shed their grace upon this moment-
This moment is not alone …
for one, then another – then another moment she runs from thoughts ……
— a moment,
then – another moment..
Then – —
– — —- she —
listens and she wonders..
She so often wonders,
in mumbled, suppressed whispers….
Her thoughts peek around in different corner like —
Spaces … some lack the light, upbeat energy she is working to gain friendship with.
… of her thoughts …
she has -little control
Of these sliding, colliding, billowing gusts of mental projections …
She has no control.
They jump forth, jump out …
These thoughts have abandoned civility…
then … in-come a barrel of words–
— words such as, “what is this?”
in slightly audible utterances;
“Where could they be? ..
Where are they? …
Who -are -they? …
When might they arrive??
Will they come by to visit? Ever?
Don’t they want to see me?….
Why…. ?? Why am I here?… hmmmmmmmuuummmmmmmmhmmmmm~..”
Then she drifts back to other distracting thoughts, before fading….. or falling right back into the room where she resides….
back to the inevitable questions,
the questions that are present, questions of right now;
… “how did they just, …
just leave their child?
How does a parent leave their only girl? Their baby?
How do they leave their- -daughter?
Did they think I’d be better cared for here??
… … …–
— – …. with the state?…
……….. with this group?
This- state??
In – This- State?!!?
…… how can a state -ever love me??
Will someone … …..
Will anyone—-
ever ….
…… actually want to adopt me????
….. hmmmmmm…. ooohhhhh……
if –
they-
don’t come get me?’… ”
She recently learned that ‘if’ is a conditional phrase. This recollection will make her English teacher happy. He liked when she paid attention to his lessons. She enjoyed his lessons and appreciated how calm he was, how non-judgmental he remained.
“God…”, she says quietly -but they are still loud enough to resemble an articulated collection of words.
Thoughts of young Jasmine quietly voiced, … these words are …
…causing her bunkmate to look up with a semblance of curiosity….
… . “God, can you hear me? …
… God???
God, if you do hear me…
It’s me, it’s little Jazz,” the uptone in her voice now peaked the ears of another roommate.
“God, it’s Jasmine…
God, do you hear me, God??…
If you do, …. I think you do…
…
-Do you listen to my thoughts?
Do you hear my -words, ….God?”
Her tone was now straining, she was pleading with God, a slightly saccharine, somewhat bleached prayer was now apparent to her roommates.
This strained whisper resonated through the quiet chamber of her bedroom. It sounded with a melancholic, nasally, whining voice that elicited different emotions in each of her roommates, although it was only Jasmine who spoke in this moment.
These sentiments of desperate hope laced and poured over many of her waking day- thoughts.
Hope still remained in young Jasmine, it was alive -yet.
These probing thoughts, desperate prayers, various considerations & hurried impulses scurried around in the active head space of young Jasmine, like directionless mice.
She thought to herself, ‘there was no way to control all this business that ran through her head”.
She had no way of catching or slowing these thoughts, they moved about in a furious manner.
It was during this particular morning, during this quiet, stillness, in the quietude of this hour that she found some space. In this quiet landscape of drifting, her conscious thoughts poured into & blended with memories. These memories circled, jumped around & Jasmine swam in what surfaced. …..
Her attention and her focus were changing directions, she wanted to calm this busy, active mind. She wanted to let it simmer & ease.
She sought out images of her mom and coveted these thoughts above the quagmire of vague recollections of other family members that clumsily entered her headspace.
These thoughts fed feelings that poured into her as she rubbed across her waking eyes and massaged her temples with the palms of her calloused hands. Her hands now becoming toughened up. Her right palm growing as rough as the course of her life had been, from before the day she was birthed.
Her hands are her proof that she, she endured.
She has always… always …
she – has endured.
Mother Madeline used to say, “Jasmine, sweetie… you, my girl, you will always….
You’ll always create, find that necessary key to open the right door… the door to the next path…
Jazz, you, you’ll live &….. you will –
……..survive.”
These hands she is looking down upon on this brisk, moist, cool morning send young Jasmine a most valuable message as she ponders what she sees.
These hands are perfect evidence that every waking day she can continue to endure, nothing can ever prevent young Jasmine from surviving, nothing can stop her ability to persevere.
She thinks aloud again, “…… hmmmmm..”, then she sends a mumbled, “isn’t it ever quite …… just….—
—– …..enough?”
All of -it. It felt so extremely unsettling. It’s been a series of moments that have bathed her nervous system in unrelenting quandaries. These jumbled scenarios have caused her to dig, to dig inside, to question, to fight, to run, … to move; move locations, move from apartment to apartment, move rooms and finally to land right in The Maria House …
-…and finally…
Finally, in an ongoing quest to survive, she is now in the moment that she has committed herself to.
She has survived… plainly, unquestioningly, … survived.
—unrelenting, tiring but never entirely giving in .. not to the despair, nor to the temptation that called out & drew in some of her peers.
… she is … as Mother Madeline told her, “Jasmine… you … are true, —
truth…. is a true –survivor. ..”
Jasmine squeezed the life force that lived in those words and tattooed the soul of that message inside her bone marrow.
She is living…
-… — she is a warrior…
… After all, she is alive and fighting with both hands, both feet, knees, even teeth when needed;
she, she will
Always -survive.
Updated 2/7/2025
(Updated Again 7/1/2025)
She wakes; unsettled, feeling uneasy and often distraught but she knows better than to allow these emotions too gobble up too much of her attention, her thought-space or inhale enough air to mature into an indulgent plant. She will re-direct what grows in her.
She refuses to allow these emotions to find their way to a hardened calcification. She knows better than to allow enough breath to reach leaves of these thoughts as she just can’t let them find the surface of waters they tread about in.
These thoughts hurt…
–they poke at Jasmine as the earrings of her mother once did when Jazz would nestle closer to know that her mom was once next to her.
Internally the thoughts that jab are too insidious, they are becoming a monstrous garden of lifeforms that don’t need any more oxygen.
If her eyes water or visibly redden she’ll have to spar with questions that just don’t align with her current needs. Although these questions come with care, empathy and concern, they often miss their target.
The area where Jasmine feels most unseen, or unfelt, unrecognized in this time is of course where she desires to be found. That part of her that holds the greatest void. The staff on this particular day approach with a clinical sterility to their line of questioning. Although they no doubt give Jasmine a feeling of being interrogated, it is with concern but less sensitivity than she knows her heart calls for.
Jasmine requires a kind, delicate awareness that is not often present in The Maria House.
She needs to find empathy, she desires care and to be cared for -gently. She knows that her mom can look after her with the care she yearns for.
The deliberate, strategic interrogations that arise when Jasmine shows a raw emotional state often come with a harshness. The types of questions and prodding that begin to transpire feel scripted, impersonal and they are offered up with far less sensitivity, less humanity and less feeling than Jasmine absolutely seeks from all directions.
Care is required when vulnerable emotive states begin to show up.
Her inner sadness rises toward the outer layers, begging to be met with tender sympathy.
She knows to remove herself entirely when such raw, flesh-piercing, intestine twisting, material pain flares up. When the swelling is following by acute emotional throbbing, Jasmine has learned to lie down, to merely stop and listen to the feelings.
Today…
— she wakes …
wakes to wonder, soon as her eyes start to squint, finding a piercing light, she is immediately conscious of her surroundings..
The sounds of linoleum flooring when they meet plastic shower-slippers pains her on this specific Wednesday. Again she brushes over her eyes, now it is just a wink past 6AM.
As both eyes begin to blink, finding a light that is peeking in from outside her window, she looks straight up. This glance is directed toward the cracked window and leans toward the sounds of young chirping Robbins perched atop firm branches that lightly sway just outside.
Sounds whir until she hears her own voice murmuring, faintly wailing out a sound that is vibrating in to the crisp morning air.
“Oooohhhhhhh….”, she sighs, this exhale is noticeable to Sarah. Sarah is bunking just below Jasmine.
….”ohhhhhhh, my, ….
….my, – my…. Hmmmm….”
She then retreats inward and reflects on what travels through her thought-space.
While reflecting she begins sitting up; legs slovenly hanging over the mattress’ edge.
She becomes aware; aware that -this- ….
This……..
This -is now …
Although she knows that more is out there, so many experiences are outside, flying around and flourishing alive in the vast world…
-she – She is here.
She is -not- out there. … ………..
she is -not out — there.
She wonders if that. …
-that which is out there, if that… that imagined paradise of frolicking families is where -love is …
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”, the exhale becomes more resonant.
She mumbles…
…iterates in a solemn but hopeful drawl;
..”..Is love- ..ee..?? …Is there love?? ”
She is now a bit less coherent, slightly foggy with meandering thoughts, thoughts of love… what it means…
and -the waking world that ventures about outside of her physical space in the world of The Maria House…
….
And then family….
……. And…
Then… a thought …
-that -this …
Is now her life, somehow her fate was made and she just wakes to watch it …
She is here – now, she is ..
here, in this room, on this bed, with these girls…
and ….
She is. Only here.
This is it. Now.
.. —- right here. Here.
This is the ground on which her home is located.
—
“This is where I live now…” she breathily exhales into her covers… …
……”this– is where I am.”
Eyes close.
…”… this is where I am…”
Philip Dane 