Broken Places

By Susan Shultz

A collection of a lifetime of poetry - love, loss, vampires, gardening, bird watching, family and more. In a variety of forms and stanzas, free verse, sonnets, joy, and laughter, sarcasm, anger tied together with a full heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Shultz
• Release date: Jul 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088243442

Susan Shultz

Author Bio:In college, Susan was heavily involved with Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru). After graduation she attended a Discipleship Training School through Youth With A Mission (YWAM), which led her to doing mission work in Japan. She also spent a year in Paris working for Campus Crusade. She then joined International Students Inc. (ISI), witnessing to international students first in her hometown in Kansas, then through mission work in China. God then called her to focus on spreading the Word of God through her own testimony. Now, whether through written testimony or other artforms that reflect God's story in her life, she testifies and inspires others to do the same.Susan is the author of Bridegroom in the Clouds Book 1: The Promise.

Book preview

For Lucy Jane and Annabelle Lee, who heal me

Dedicated to my mother and father

    "Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than

he does the beauties of nature."

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Cup of Stars

For Shirley Jackson

Call me

If you need to talk -

I’ll see you in your secret spaces.

I can’t mend your heart

But can meet its broken places.

I don’t know what’s beyond

The depth of your pond

Or who is swimming.

This little girl

Makes you a fried cheese sandwich

Without fuss.

If there’s a another realm -

We will find each other.

I won’t speculate

On the existence

Of soul.

But I’ll put it’s light on

Knowing you make mine whole.

I won’t say I know where you are

But I’ll keep looking -

for your cup full of stars.

Scars

You can’t scare me with scars -

Here’s where most of them are.

My map of the broken

Corners split as it’s opened.

I wish I could stop it

This festered zit, pop it.

I can’t say you have caused it

But I beg you to pause it.

Still it’s my verse to bear -

Leave, sleep, dream, care.

There’s no treasure found

After shipwreck’s alarmed -

Unless you can count

My heart strangled, and starved.

My peg leg, my eye patch, and legends of old.

The ship that I’m sinking, still seeks buried gold.

My treasure map withered but brush off the dust -

It’s magic key - loyalty, kindness and trust.

I Love Old Perfume

Not to wear

But to breathe

A cascade of my

Grandmother

Serving tea

Watching her stories

A different time where things remained

Comforting

Like a coat on the master bedroom’s bed

That you held close

To breathe her in

Knowing she’d be gone

Someday

Until the old perfume

Passes you in a bathroom

And you hold back

From reaching for

Someone who isn’t her

The Haunted House

I will haunt this house.

My heart is in its bones -

Its chips, and its failings

Our basement bowels  groan.

I will haunt this house -

We have aged as one.

I breath