A decade ago
After my divorce from the narcissist
Everyone still tiptoed around me.
“Don’t upset her! She’s been through a lot, they whispered.”
I admit it took a long time for this to happen. Healing from abuse has its own time clock.
But one day, while waiting in a rather long line at the Walmart in Kingston, New York
I turned and asked my 80-something-year-old mother and 50-something sister:
“Are either of you, still waiting for that moisturizer to work? Because inquiring minds want to know.”
We laughed and laughed, all the way home.
Ó11/4/25 Cornelia DeDona
Published by
C. S. De Dona
Author, Poet, Photographer, domestic violence survivor, and naturalized immigrant, Cornelia is currently an Arts and Letters member of The Southwest Florida Branch of The National League Of American Pen Women.
Cornelia lived in Kaneohe, Hawaii, for thirty-six years. Also, seven years in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York. She now resides in North Fort Myers, Florida.
Her poems and photography are published in print, online, and in Rain Bird, a literary and art journal of the University of Hawaii's Windward Community College (2008-2013).
In 2013, Cornelia received Rain Bird's Kolokolea Poetry Prize for her poem, "Speaking French."
In 2016, her chapbook "Hawaiian Time," entered in the National League of American Pen Women's Vinnie Ream contest, was awarded third place in their inaugural multi-discipline category.
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