Islander Highlights - Valentine Edition!

Message in a Bottle #19
Origin: Isle of Write
Sender: @authorofthings
Recipients: Steemit Creatives

Islander Highlights - Valentine Edition!

It’s Valentine’s Day, so naturally, we’re going to bring you all the lovey dovey stuff in this round of Isle Treasure. Starting with this gem of a love letter. Here is a glimpse:

This isn't one of those. I mean, do you remember the texture of the fabric of the shirt you were wearing on July 28th, 1990?
I do. It was soft cotton. I distinctly remember the weight of my leather jacket on my shoulders, the heat of my motorcycle's engine, the suede interior of my gloves on my hands, and the smell of musk perfume coming off the crunchy-poofies. I remember these things not because of what they were, but because of what came next. They provided context. It was out of this miasma of sensations that wonder was built.

The story by @serapium is lovely, but it’s also eminently relatable to for its apt descriptions, its humor and its humanity. Read it for yourself here: What Does 'Love at First Sight' Look Like? This:

---

Next, we were taken on a brief journey of one Islander’s love of words via her trip to the Library of Congress:

Behold the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies

The piece if full of these little pithy quotes, and we hope something there gives a spark to your next poem, story, essay or whatever art calls to you. Thank you, @amrauthor for the journey. You can read the rest here: Magical Places - the Library of Congress

---

For a more visual sort of travel - check out this fantastic photo essay about a visit to Painted Rock by @bigtom13:

It is one of the largest petroglyph sites in the world, with over 800 individual glyphs. Widely presumed to be a HoHokum site, some of the glyphs are unknown in either the HoHokum culture, or in the Patayn culture to the west. It is apparent that these were a people that lived in between the two great cultures around 1000 AD. It’s short, but full of intriguing details about the Painted Rock. You can read the rest of it here: Travels With Connie #21 Painted Rock

---

Let’s now travel to Palmyra, but in verse, from one of the Isle’s frequent poetry queue editors @whoshim:

Great gardens grow,
green-bright, blue, and red,
by a murmuring river meandering,
its melody simple and soft,
slowly singing among them
of sweetness and of love.

You’ll feel like you are in the Valley of Kings indeed, if only for a moment. Read the entire poem here: The Valley of Kings

---

Here is a very short and thankfully (for now) fictional story on time travel and the price of such an undertaking written by @poet:

There isn’t a time police, like they thought there would be. Instead, the fact that only females could time travel somehow prevented time travel from being used poorly. I smiled.

At the risk of giving you any more spoilers, we’ll just leave you with the story, which you can read here: My Last Jump

---

And now for an entirely different sort of love story. Because @negativer is like that. This is dark, and heartbreaking, yet what better love stories than tragic ones? Negativer has been scarce lately and it’s fantastic to see him on the Isle again. And writing. Here is a small taste:

Then I left, savoring a final backwards glance of pale light across naked flesh and cascading golden hair. Closed eyes that always crinkled when she laughed. A mouth that could smile and grimace and smile again so quickly. Fingers that were deft upon my skin when she was playful. So firm when she holding her quill. Or me.
That's how I would remember her.
You can read the rest here: A Diary of All My Failures

---

What do you do if you’re in love, but that love is across an ocean? If you’re a poet - you battle the loneliness, the missing of the other half of your being with words. Guy, @geekorner, does just that in this poem:

Without you,
I'm a warrior shorn,
no protector for our people.
No lion slain, no foxes outwitted, no hive found.
The dust settles around me,
my enemies still stand.
I'm weak and powerless,
and voiceless,
without you.

Read the rest of it (and discover who the lucky Valentine is) here: The Null Testament

---

This next author, @bradpreslar is new to Steemit, but not at all new to being an author. This story will punch you in the gut. Here’s a tiny taste:

"Make it quick," he said.

My heart pounded as I climbed, the rifle slung over my shoulder. It felt loud enough for Winston to hear, especially in the dead quiet of the lakeshore. My head was almost level with the floor of the cave when I stopped. I readied my rifle, pointed the barrel into the cave and peered over the lip into the darkness. Costa and the woman sat on the floor, watching me.
"Marshal Bowen, this is my wife, Mrs. Costa," he said.

"Wife?"

knew what it meant, but it wasn't a word people used anymore. The Covenant had eliminated state-sanctioned lifelong partners, loosening the bonds of the family unit enough that we could overlap and procreate with less friction.

She said, "Please, call me Selah. And yes, we are husband and wife."

I looked over my shoulder to see Winston staring up at me. He held up his watch and tapped the face. I turned back to them. "Listen. I might be able to help you, but you've got to change the way you're--"

Mr. Costa interrupted. "Do you know why the survivors included that law in the Covenant?"

Want to know what’s going on in this small scene? Read the story here. It is, in its own strange way, a love story: The Survivor's Covenant

---

Feel like taking a break from all the emotions you’ve experienced while reading the posts we’ve pointed you to? Of course you do. Here is a humorously done invite to help move doodles (yeah, we said doodles) from plain to mansion-worthy, or so @bennettitalia tells us. A Renaissance man who sings, writes, plays music, draws, paints, waxes poetic or philosophical and apparently, enjoys the word doodle enough to turn doodling into a daily challenge for himself:

Adopt a doodle today!

The more comments and votes a doodle gets, the more likely it will be to shed its crinkly paper cocoon and flutter about with the gorgeous creatures that inhabit galleries, museums, and mansions.

Yes, I said mansions.

Imagine how happy the little doodles will be!

Full disclosure: really the main reason I'm doing this is that I love the word "doodle", and this is a nice excuse to write "doodle" over and over again. Doodle doodle

DOODLE!

Any other doodlebugs out there? Feel free to post your favorite doodles in the comments below, for upvotes, commentary, and love.

For here, we celebrate the doodle.

Go ahead, check it out. It’ll make you laugh, and that’s never a bad thing:
The Daily Doodle #8

---

Wistful - which isn’t really the same as sad. There is something very wistful about this piece by our regular and always helpful Islander, @Carmalain7, its inherent beauty notwithstanding. The cadence, the music of it. Also, a love story. Of sorts:

A snowstorm melting from my hair - dripping cataract:
diluted coffee. A dark room filled with language
so beautiful, I almost understood what was said.

You can read this short, gorgeous poem here: I Was Never a Writer

---

What of that other love, the one that we tend to feel guilty about, the loving of our own selves, especially as we age. Here is a lovely prose poem on turning sixty by @marillaanne:

And I could feel myself becoming
slightly more resistant to change,
simply because of the effort.
It was not fun to read and
building the internal scaffolding that
I hang new thoughts upon was
much more challenging since
I would be inclined to start
intense interior decor design on
floor five
before the levels below were even
50% framed.

Vulnerable, humorous, human. Read the whole thing here: A Few Notes from my Desk on the Topic of Aging

---

We’d be remiss not to mention yet another love not often spoken of or written about in these parts, as if it must remain secret. @poetrybyjeremy gives us a visceral glimpse into what it’s like to be in love and gay. It’s the little things and the big things. Here is a tiny tiny piece of it:

Except,
instead of enjoying the bliss
in a loving embrace,
you protect yourselves
from the man with bulging eyes
who repeatedly shouts…

The poem is very short, but the images are indelible. Read it here: You’re Gay

---

And since it is still indeed Valentine’s Day, we are going to leave you with words from @yahialababidi, a poet, a philosopher, a mystic. Words on love, of course:

We find that the Love we hold back, in turn, holds us back—since, at the root of all unhappiness, is a crisis of Love: for ourselves, of others, or the Divine….
Read the pithy, beautiful sayings here: Meditations on Love

Until next time,
And of course, Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

---

---

See what else the Isle is up to:
In-Depth at the Isle: @Cheah
Isle of Write Poetry Curation Week 3 Roundup
Treasure of the Isle
Isle of Write Islander Highlights! Week 2
In-Depth at the Isle: @Vitkolesnik
Isle of Write Curation Announcement!
Isle of Write Poetry Publication Week 2 Roundup
Community, Contest, and Curation, Oh my!
Conversations with Authors - Yahia Lababidi

---

Do you believe as we do that Steemit Creatives deserve recognition for their hard work and talent? If so, please help us in our mission to reward this creativity both on and off Steemit. Upvote, resteem, follow!

Are you looking to help a community dedicated to the respect and encouragement of Steemit creativity? Please consider a donation or delegation to Isle of Write. All of our account earnings go back into the Steemit Creative community.

---

If you'd like to wash up on our shore,
a click of the map brings you straight to our door!

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics