+ Her Barefoot Heart
tomorrow
or maybe the next day,
depending,
you’ll see
these:
or these:
or these:
along with this:
and this:
as i launch
my
red phone stories.
i won’t do them
every day
cause
like far too many
people,
they’re
high maintenance.
but
every now ‘n then,
i’ll be
sharing a
red phone story,
telling you
about women
claiming,
proclaiming,
and reclaiming
their
genius
gorgeous
genuine
glory.
she had closed her eyes
to so much
for so long
that eventually
they receded into
mere specks of
background color.
To see the big picture . . . Continue reading
“i was a war bride,” she says. “we were so scared – things were changing so fast – we needed something to hold onto and we knew marriage even if we didn’t know each other.”
“but i wouldn’t do it again. no, i definitely wouldn’t do it again.”
///
maybe it’s because my daddy worked in a rock quarry,
maybe it’s because i collected rocks as a kid,
maybe it’s because i’m plum nelly crazy.
whatever the reason,
i see stories in stone.
stoneiatures, i call them.
if you’d like to see the context,
the complete photo,
come right this way . . .
she had reached
that certain age
where it seemed
to those who had
known her for a long time
that she was of
two mouths
and it often seemed to those
on the receiving end
that the mouth in the back
of her head
was full of
jagged, razor-sharp, uncensored teeth.
it didn’t take long,
as it turned out,
for that toothy, cheeky,
big ole’ mouth
with the prominent overbite
to become
her favorite
way to communicate.
///
maybe it’s because my daddy worked in a rock quarry,
maybe it’s because i collected rocks as a kid,
maybe it’s because i’m plum nelly crazy.
whatever the reason,
i see stories in stone.
stoneiatures, i call them.
if you’d like to see the context,
the complete photo,
come right this way . . .
do you see the silhouette there?
the face in the stone?
you need to know this about me:
i am bad to personify.
equally bad to tell stories . . .
every morning
at dark thirty,
she pulls her soft, wispy white hair,
a gift from her matriarchal lineage,
into a bun at the nape of her neck
to keep it out of her way
while she feeds fabric
under the needle
that dances up and down
in direct proportion
to the cast iron pedal
she pumps up and down with her feet.
the steady whirring
of the old singer machine
fills the air with music
as she creates quilts –
one for each child,
one for each grandchild –
from assorted scraps of fabric
purchased from
her friend across the street,
paid for with one of her
award-winning
pineapple upside-down cakes.
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
© 2026 Jeanne Hewell-Chambers
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