Weighted

By E.S.E. Burno

All the best and worst things in life have the power to lift us up or bring us down. Often, we let outside, unforeseen and imagined concepts add to or take away from our bounty of happiness because we either dont know how or fail to use appropriate measures to achieve the results we desire. Sometimes, we have to know when to laugh, cry, scream, or be still. We forget that through it all, there is love, and when we learn to measure its worth for enriching our lives or its weight for burdening our lives, the scales will not tip in our favor for unmeasurable happiness.

In joy,
E.S.E. Burno

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524572600

E.S.E. Burno

I grew up with newspapers, comic books, magazines, the dictionary, and a complete set of the encyclopedia. When I wasn’t reading, I was writing about my thoughts, my impressions, and my version of what should be written. I grew up listening and talking with older cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and elderly neighbors. The things they would tell about events they had to live through long before I was born was better than any Saturday matinee I had seen. I grew up writing in the margins of books I read and reread to expand the adventure of going places and doing things in my mind that I could imagine. I filled school composition books and diaries with stories of everything—many often go unnoticed. But for me, they made days less boring, nights more bearable, school interesting, work tolerable, and life wonderful.

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Copyright © 2017 by E.S.E. Burno.

Library of Congress Control Number:            2017909969

ISBN:                    Hardcover                           978-1-5245-7262-4

                              Softcover                            978-1-5245-7261-7

                              eBook                                 978-1-5245-7260-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/23/2017

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Contents

I Don’t Fly Anymore

Anastasia, Read Me The World

A Table For Six

It’s Just A Game

Birthday Presences

Drawn By Fire

Journey Of My Soul

Dedicated to

Angelean H. Edwards

Angelean%20H.%20Edwards-.jpg

MA, I could spend an eternity and it still would not be enough time to say all the required Thank You’s for every second of my life you filled with love.

You taught me the blessings of love, happiness and peace comes through nurtured family bonds; forged lasting friendships, and knowing that God lives.

I am grateful and honored to be your daughter; and, I am proud to call you my Mother.

I will Love You Always,

You Second of Six,

Etta

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I Don’t Fly Anymore

By E.S.E.Burno

In the happiest of dreams

when I felt a part of every scene; I soared!

Longing just once, to touch that azure blue sky,

no matter how long or high I’d have to fly.

How tough flying was, trying to return to the ground,

then some flicker of light or tinkering sound

would wake me before I’d ever touch down.

Knowing how high I soared, the night before

filled my waking hours; I wanted more!

Just dreams away, I knew, I would find

that touching the sky is an easy climb.

In every flying dream I would soar miles higher

and awake I’d count the number of dreams

I needed to acquire,

Before I’d have the dream where the ceiling of the sky

would not let me go higher!

Just one dream away I found,

It harder to keep from coming down:

Closer to the clouds –

Below the clouds –

Above the great patches of land –

Atop the tallest point –

Just out of rifle range –

Up on the roof.

I fluttered feverishly,

To make it to the top of a giant tree.

Now in my flying dreams, I could no longer soar,

I glide lower than in the last,

And I don’t fly anymore.

And when the little girl asked,

Why are you always looking up at the sky?"

This was my reply:

"Don’t it just make you want to fly?

To be close enough, to reach up, and touch the sky;

And SOAR!!!"

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Anastasia,

Read Me The world

E.S.E. Burno

Before her, no story I read has such life. She made my 10th grade English Literature class come alive by the way she embraces each word, of every page, of every book we read. The first time I saw Miss N’Diogane, she was standing in the front of the classroom trying to get the attention of a group of rowdy students whose loudness and unruliness intimidated her.

Miss N’Diogane was in her mid-40s. Watching her flow across the classroom, it was easy to imagine her teaching during the turn of the 20th Century, in a small New England town, at a girl’s boarding school. She wore her jet black hair up, fashioned for that period and her clothes were like those worn by Suffragettes. Her large, light brown-sugar eyes that looked over her Ben Franklin glasses showed a sadness which seemed to lessen as she read and discussed romantic literature of the ages. She was a mediocre teacher and her authority meant little to those rude students who could easily intimidate her.

Miss N’Diogane’s soft, accented voice quickly drew everyone’s attention when she told us that we could choose the grade we wanted for her course. An A required daily attendance and participation in class discussions. A B required that the student use that period as a free period; somewhere else. Only six of us remained seated when the other 34 students noisily sashayed out the door. Her soft voice broke the after-rush silence when she said, Well; now we have enough books for the class.

In awe, I listened to her recite passages from classic stories, plays and poems with such angelic softness that each word she spoke produced its own harp-line tone and conveyed vivid images, in my mind, of the tales she recounted. Perhaps the stories she selected were so moving because they reflected the romantic course of her personal life. The Browning’s’ sonnets expressed her emotions at the dawn of her new love. Shakespeare’s Dream echoes accounts of the jovial passion they exchanged; and once, while reading the Tales of Amadou Koumba, N’Diogane wept. That moment, watching her so touched by a tale of lost love, moved my reader’s soul and sealed my desire to get to know Miss Anastaisa N’Diogane.

I registered for Miss N’Diogane’s 11th and 12th grade English and History classes, and I joined the Forensics Club she monitored. On the last class day of each year, she would take the small group of A students out for dinner. It was then we would learn about Miss N’Diogane; her Ghanaian mother and Beninian father; her college romance with Christopher (her English professor), and his sudden death from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 32, just two days before their wedding. She even told us, in her own gentle way, when and why she developed the A – B teaching method. It was during her first assignment the fall after Christopher’s death. Interpretations of romantic literature, she told us, are studied best by students whose hearts have the capacity to appreciate the pleasures and pains of love. Then she leaned forward, as if to tell us a secret, and added, They learn NOT to let love pass them by.

My graduation in 1976, did not end our relationship. Miss N’Diogane always invited four of her A+ students, of which I was one, to her Woodhaven home for a four weeks summer vacation. Miss N’Diogane was more Anastasia in her home, than anywhere else I had observed her. While the other girls spent their days enjoying her posh, plush, suburban surroundings, I enjoyed learning about Anastasia.

Mondays she gardened. Tuesdays she knitted or sewed. Wednesdays she baked goods we delivered to her friends she visited on Thursdays and on Fridays she wrote letters to distant relatives. One Friday, while writing a letter, she stopped, looked over the top of her glasses and said, Etta, you should find a friend to write to on a regular basis. Someone who would keep your letter so that when you’re much older, you could read them and remember moments long since passed. Without waiting for a reply, she returned to her writing. I continued gazing at her and I thought, if I were to pick someone to write to, it would be she.

Saturdays she held reading circles and on Sundays, precisely at 12:53 p. m., she would walk out onto the patio, cross the lawn, pass the pool ground and go beyond the gazebo to the garden chapel. At exactly 2:37 p. m., she always returned to the house. In her eyes there was a hopeful, longing expression and in her gentile movements, contentment. Her voice quietly wept words that strengthened with each sentence she spoke. The warm wings of the sun, she braced up and expounded, carried me up beyond it light, before I remembered I had to prepare lunch. Even though her tear-soaked face was barely rendering a smile, she was the closes to being happy I had ever seen her.

Unfortunately, the morning came when we were to leave. The vacation was at an end. I visited her chapel, knelt before the altar and asked God to give her someone to love. Later, I almost cried aloud when she and I hugged and said our See you in the Fall goodbyes. The car ride home with my parents was scenic and melancholy. While my mother and father discussed the people, places and things they may encounter in their upcoming vacation, I back traced the four weeks I had just spent with Miss N’Diogane, Jennifer, Janice and Cynthia. The summer of ’76, I got the chance to embrace her. I wondered if my fawning over her during that vacation wasn’t obvious to the girls and especially Anastasia; and, if I had the classic crush on an English Lit teacher, or on Anastasia herself.

Thursday, three days before Christmas and the last day of classes before the winter break, I went back to my alma mater to visit Miss N’Diogane. The last day of classes was for building-wide holiday parties and exchanging gifts. The entire building was abundantly decorated; for me, this was a day to be jolly; I was going to see Anastasia.

I went into the dean’s office to get a visitor’s pass to see her. Sister Marie Francis told me Miss N’Diogane was, no longer with us. At first, I was just disappointed; I missed my chance to see her, embrace her, and give her the silk-embroidered African designed handkerchiefs I meticulously gift wrapped. Oh well, I thought, I’ll just mail this gift to her, I said. That’s when Sister Francis told me she is dead. I was stunned. Anger built up inside me with each step I took as I walked out of Sr. Francis’ office, slammed the main entrance door behind me, and fighting back the tears I stomped down the street to where I stood confused. I didn’t know or cared what I would do next. From all I was feeling in my soul, I could only fall upon my knees and cry aloud, NOooooooooo!

Miss N’Diogane’s dead. For me, the Christmas of ’76 was full of silent nights. My mind kept echoing Sister Francis’ voice saying she is dead. From Jennifer, who was working in the dean’s office when it happened, I learned that Miss N’Diogane’s was killed, stabbed, the third week of school, while trying to stop a fight between two of her students.

I filled with hate for them. When I wasn’t praying for Anastasia, I prayed I never cross paths with either