Found this on Hitrecord.com. That site was a bust for me. But this piece isn’t so bad.

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I wake up in the morning to a diffused Autumn morning light . The temperature will rise to 88 degrees, according to NPR. I lay in bed longer than I should, but I’m useless until 10 at least.

/I get up and put slippers and pants on. I make peppermint green tea with honey. The smell brings nostalgic thoughts, and I go through old albums looking for traces of who I would become in the eyes of a 14-year old debutante.

/She has my eyes and my cheekbones, my nose and lips. But the eyes, they are foreign to me. They were bluer than the hazel-green eyes my mother claims I never had. As if I stand before her, a stranger as well.

/I upload the photos to an album I have in the cloud and drink my tea while I catch up on social media, wondering if someday I’ll be shouting out to more than just the empty void of the literary universe.

/I smoke a menthol cigarette as the dogs lay on the cool tile.  I think back to that 14-year old girl and wonder what she thought she would be doing at 38. And I know that she could never have imagined the obstacles she would teach herself to overcome and the people who would play a role in her life.

/That girl was pretty stubborn about what she wanted. I gave it all to her. I birthed a life that was good and coveted. And when I could give no more, the wax melted from that marble façade to reveal cracks. She became “sincera,”—an Italian world used to describe the natural contours of imperfect stone. With the waxy fillers gone, she learned to become vulnerable. To become sincere. To become me.

/Tea drank and cigarette smoked, I returned to my desk.  Today might just be the day where I break through and surprise myself with my own writing. Or maybe I won’t. But I’ll never know if I don’t try. And I owe her at least that much if I’m going to tell her story properly.