sometimes we just have to do the best we can, and we have to ignore the people who think we aren’t doing our best. in fact, forget those people exist, and if you can’t forget them, remember that they care more about themselves than you. there is a freedom in being ignored, you know. when you’re invisible you can be your weird, wild, whimsical self. you can do that all the time, but it’s easier when people aren’t watching. so stop caring who’s watching. no one is watching. everyone else is worried about their bills and the laundry piling up, they’re worried about stock futures and waistlines, whether they’ll ever find love or retire. remember, you are the main character of your own story, and you need to make way for everyone else’s to be told. you tell yours, they’ll tell theirs, and maybe one day you can listen to each other without seeing all of your differences.

give me a long walk on the beach,
in the evening when the sun is setting;
i’d take that over most things, every day.
give me an island all to myself,
give me white sand stretched out
as far as my eyes can see
between the lush jungle and the sea
let me be free
let me go somewhere else, where
i can really leave all my troubles behind,
let me have the life i want
one day, please?

© Copyright 2026 Cheney Meaghan Giordano

I’m tired this morning.

I want to be productive and act like nothing earth shattering happened this weekend, but Bobby leaving was not something I expected or was prepared for, and I think I’m in some numb state of shock and I still can’t believe it’s really over.

Poetry and words are all I have to make me feel better in times like these, so even if it’s short and ugly, I’m going to share what I can when I feel like it, cause why the hell not?

look at you, sweet as ever,
your poor naive heart broken again

just go ahead and bury yourself
under blankets for half day,
then you need to get up and carry on

it’s the way it’s always been,
and you know it, only
this is the last, and you know that, too

look, no one ever said this would be easy,
but don’t make it harder on you than
it has to be, leave quietly,
don’t linger and make them think
you might actually want to stay

That terrible thing is happening again.

I guess I’ll just have to write about it on the internet eventually.

I had to get fasting bloodwork done this morning so I basically rolled out of bed, dressed, got my blood drawn and then came directly to my favorite new coffee shop in my favorite little city.

I miss living here, in the city.

It’s a small city, probably only around 30,000 residents, and very small in regards to space, but the downtown area is lovely, filled with shops, restaurants, art galleries and music venues, and I used to live right around here, right downtown where all the action was.

Being here makes me not want to be anywhere else, and that isn’t a good thing.

I had a panic attack yesterday because I couldn’t stop thinking that I will have to spend the rest of my life with a boss’s boot pressed down on my neck.

I had a panic attack yesterday because medical bills are popping up and surprising me a couple of times a week, I’m broke as a joke, I’m afraid I’ll overdraw my bank account, and worse, I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay rent and eat.

I am afraid all the fucking time, and I am so sick of it, I wish I could just have a completely different life.

I miss the time when I worked for myself.

Seven years I went without a boss, it’s hard to reacclimatize to being someone’s bitch as a profession, but here I am, 8:30-4:00, Monday through Friday, doing work I love under conditions I can’t stand.

I miss the days I could just get up and come to a coffee shop like this and stay here as long as I want. Such as it is, I am not halfway done with my coffee but I already have to leave here in fifteen minutes to get to work on time.

In another life, I could be sitting here all day, I could have these fingers flying over the keyboard and making money with my words.

Now?

Now, when I have the time I have to negotiate with my energy.

Now, when I have the time, I have to choose very carefully I want to spend it, because I’m 43 years old and see something now that it took me this long to see: time really is money.

We made the world wrong, we made it horribly, so that it serves only the richest of the rich among us, and fuck everyone else.

Fuck me, in particular, with debt and no way to pay it down, no way to save money, no way out of the life I feel completely trapped in, and it’s a trap I made for myself.

I fucked up and didn’t do well with life.

I fucked my life right up.

Right now I am using what little time I have to just bitch and whine about the state of my life and how much I hate it.

I don’t feel like I have enough time between now and work to do anything quite productive.

I don’t feel like I have enough time.

When I was young
I found a crate of pickle jars
on the side of the road
and I’ve spent the rest of my life
wondering why it was there.

Not a crack in a glass,
wood crate intact,
unopened pickles.

Who put them there?
Why did they put them there?
Why is the greatest mystery
of my life a crate of pickles?

I couldn’t take it with me
on my bicycle, but
I stayed and stared at it
for a long time, wondering.

Did aliens drop it from the sky?
Did it appear from another dimension?
Did someone put it there and say:
“You can pick up the pickles
on the side of the road.”

It can’t have fallen and bounced
to the road’s shoulder,
it would have smashed
to pickles and glass.

Now, thirty years later,
I still wonder
how those pickles
came to the side of the road.

It’s the greatest mystery of my life.

This was loosely based on a writing prompt about things you find on the side of the road.

This is a completely true story.

I will go to my grave never knowing how or why those pickles were left on the side of the road.

What you don’t know is this is the only chance at life this little guy ever had, so he’s going to embrace it and grow with it. You are walking to the shop when see it, a yellow mark on an otherwise gray sidewalk. You follow the cracks in the pavement until you realize this is a flower, this is a dandelion growing up from between the cracks in the pavement, and you think, awww.

You know that this flower began as a wisp of a seedling tossed through the air and landed in just the right place to have just enough room to grow. The determination of that dandelion is one of the most brave and beautiful things you’ve ever seen. Standing tall, reaching for the sun, not noticing it’s all alone out there.

Not needing to care.

because that’s what an adult would do,
they would come in the door and hang their coat,
they would remove their shoes and
put them exactly where they belong

and after, maybe they’d change into
a little something more comfortable before
slipping a drink into their hand, a beer,
a cocktail, a mother fucking margarita
thank you very much,

they can have it all because
they’re all grown up now, oh,
wait, I’m all grown up now,
i forget i’m supposed to be one of them,
the adults, the grown-ups,
no more kid’s table for me

no more wishbones
or the rest of the cranberry sauce,
sweet and sticky,
smeared across my careless lips

This was very, very, loosely inspired by Mary Oliver’s Freshen the Flowers, She Said, but I think it’s more that I like the titles of my poems as the first lines of my poems.

That’s a thing people do, I guess. It works.

I took up a challenge to write a poem only using what my senses could sense: what I could see, hear, smell, touch, or taste.

When you take the things individually, they are just snippets of life, just things, but when you read them all together at once, they become this other thing that I’m more impressed with than I thought I would be.

I am forcing myself, well, not forcing, but persisting in doing these exercises this weekend while I have time off to focus on me and not think about work, or the precious hours between home and work until the weekend comes again.

And, of course, hoping/wishing/praying/dreaming for the day I don’t have to feel any guilt about sitting around with my laptop all day, because it’s the only job I want to have.

An owl hooting / the dishwasher and its gurgle and whoosh / his footsteps above me / my own breath in and out / the clatter of the keys / the smell of coffee / the ridiculousness of squirrels / my cat sitting at the door waiting to pounce / the chipmunks on the other side of the glass / a plane’s droning in the sky / the soft couch beneath me / the gray of the sky

I just read an article on Georgia O’Keeffe and how she lived her life.

She lived it painstakingly, with purpose and drive, knowing exactly what she wanted and exactly where she needed to go to find it.

She traveled between New York and New Mexico over and over before finally choosing the south, except she believed that land chose her.

Nothing came easy to her.

She had to fight for her art, and she had to fight to create a place to make her art, and that’s where I feel I’m at right now.

Of course I’m not some tortured artist O’Keeffe, (who knows if she was ever tortured at all), but I am definitely still fighting to find where I belong in the world of art, and in the world in general.

I don’t feel like I fit here. I used to, but the world is getting bad, really bad, and America is leading the badness.

I am not proud to be an American. When I was a kid I was proud, because we were taught we had freedom like it’s something that hundreds of other countries don’t have themselves. There are freer places than this; there are much better places than this.

I no longer pledge allegiance to the flag, and I don’t recite the national anthem.

I am tired of making myself feel like a fraud to make other people feel comfortable.

I keep telling my friend Abby that we need to move to a commune, or just start our own. We should do anything to get out of here.

O’Keeffe got out of New York when she could, and she went south west to find her red mountains and sprawling flowers.

Where do I need to go to find the place where words spill from my hands like sand?

I have to go inside, deep inside, not somewhere else in the country or even in the world.

I am not a painter searching for the perfect subject, I am a writer searching for the story that calls me enough to keep caring long enough to finish it. I’m my own worst enemy, always.

I can’t fly or drive to where I need to be, I can only walk there with my fingers and make them dance over the keys, or hold a pen to scratch across paper every chance I get.

Should it be this hard, though? I ask myself that all the time.

I think of Bukowski’s ‘so you want to be a writer’ and think that it’s not just pouring out of me, so maybe I shouldn’t do it, maybe I shouldn’t bother even trying.

Then I remember as brilliant as his words may seem, he was a depressed drunk who never seemed to find happiness in his life, let alone even the littlest bit of peace.

The only thing to do is keep writing and keep reading, and keep letting myself get inspired even if I have to take other people’s ideas to begin and do it.

There is no shame in having someone hold your hand when you begin your journey, right?

I am trying to join people on their journeys.

I signed up for Writing in the Dark because it had so many great reviews as a place to develop writing and become part of a community, and that is what I am looking for, to become part of a writing community.

Last week I was supposed to join my favorite living poet, Maya Stein, on a Zoom call to share poetry together with other poets seeking validation and community, but sadly that morning my grandmother died, and I didn’t think I could enjoy the space.

Hopefully I can make that up soon, and I am going to keep looking forward every day to the retreat I am taking at her house in June - I feel like I need to pinch myself, I can’t believe I am so lucky to be able to do what I am going to be doing up in Maine.

Six days of solitude to do nothing but write, read, walk, and sink deep into myself like I know I need to do to get myself going.

I can’t wait, and it’s coming so much sooner than I can believe.

But I can’t wait is the thing.

I can’t wait for the possibility that a single week in June will change my life and turn me into whatever I think should be called a ‘real writer’.

This is a place for writers.

This is a place for writers to chill and reset, and work if I want, but maybe mostly play and give myself a break.

But I know I won’t give myself a break.

I know I will sit there in that adorable cabin, scrawling in a journal at the desk, or out on the porch with my coffee in the morning.

I know I will walk the short distance to the nearest beach and hunt for seaglass.

And I know, now that I’m a morning person, that I’ll get up early at least once and walk down to the water to watch the sun rise from the east, and take in that beautiful glow of morning that only the luckiest can see.

But I can’t wait…

I haven’t gone to the dentist in over twenty years, in so long I can’t even remember, really, why I am so scared. It takes a broken tooth and fear like a dagger in my chest to seek help for what I know I need.

Bobby drives me to the dentist while I weep in the front seat. He isn’t afraid like I am, he wouldn’t be shaking and crying and scared shitless, but he’ll take me there and sit with me, and hold my hand through everything. When I’m left alone after x-rays I panic and run to him and he catches me in his arms, and this is how I need him, this is how I need him.

Bobby, do you think I’m ridiculous, do you think I’m overreacting to something that everyone goes through? I suppose if there’s a waitlist for appointments with anesthesia I’m not alone, but don’t we know by now that some things can’t be numbed enough? That some things will always hurt as much as they hurt the first time? Like a dagger to my chest, or a ring on your finger?

I don’t want to do this, Bobby, I’m scared of what’s going to happen. Can’t we drive in the opposite direction and go to the beach or a brewery or someplace familiar and safe? Can’t we forget this is happening, that any of this came to pass and led to this?

We could play would you rather and instead of this we’d be camping next to a river or bellying up to a bar or maybe we’d even be laying in bed on a Sunday afternoon because that’s always the best choice out of all the things to do. I always want to do the best things with you.

Bobby, they’re going to pull my tooth out, and instead of your hand to hold I’ll have drugs to take me away. They won’t let you in the room with me, they’ll make me go it alone.

Bobby, do you want to go it alone, or do you want me by your side? I don’t want to have to be wondering that when they make me leave you, and put me to sleep.

Will you be there when I wake up?

This is in response to one of ’s writing prompts. I’m not going to share what the prompt is, because that would be giving her goods away for free, and that would not be nice to a writer.

I love combining poetry and prose and mashing it together into one thing, as much as I prefer writing letters to people than talking to them in person.

I am really excited about this new writing adventure I am taking and hope I end up producing a great body of work.

I’d love it if you followed along.

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I have been a reading the publication, Writing in the Dark, by for over a year now, and I finally just subscribed to the paid version so I could get access to her collection of prompts, lessons, projects, and all these other great things than many people say are "better than an MFA”.

Well, an MFA isn’t in my future, so why not try one that so many people recommend?

I love writing to prompts, and feel like I can stretch my creativity more when I start with a writing prompt than when I just try to come up with something on my own.

I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing for me, but it is what it is, and I have to roll with it.

I write every day on my website, cheney.me, irregularly post on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/cheneydotme and sometimes share my writing on Medium here: https://thedeepgreensea.blog/

Just read to get to know me, that’s the best way for everyone, I think.