Valiant Scribe
A literary hub giving voice to the voiceless by retelling the human experience

Marriage does not deputize a spouse to carry another adult’s sin, addiction, or dysfunction. And yet, for years, that’s exactly what it felt like I was supposed to do.

“Ms. Stafford,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry to startle you, but they told me at the hospital that you found me that morning and called for the ambulance. You saved my life. I wanted to stop by to thank you.”

I am flawed and imperfect imbued with conflicting emotions with extreme polarities in thought my anxieties instill fear and my fear breeds anxiety

Second Sunday of Lent. Confession prayer, and my fingers are consumed with unweaving my eldest son’s TheraPutty from  his liturgy booklet, pressed in some moment of sensory need  to the perforated part where you share contact details and prayer requests.

Artificial intelligence now confronts us with the same lesson in compressed form. The danger is not malevolence, but moral weightlessness

Secondly, the rest of the children’s voices suddenly rose up and filled the room.  And then, John began to spin. 

Once again, it’s Christmas—the season of merriment, goodwill, and cheer. For most, it’s a time for family and friends, and a time to...

You call me your enemy, but you do not know me. my fears, mistakes, worries and woes strengths, courage, and resolve.

—it’s the pain of those unmet needs that exposes your claws and bares your teeth. Every fallen feather is a prayer—God, save this world.

we are children of a God who has given us everything we know and want, but don’t understand and so, I am a muddled and confused human

Words are not an action Nor downcast looks the heart of grief Whether in soul or transgressed body A warm embrace and prayer sincere

There has been harm in my story, and as in all good stories, an enemy lurking.  Sometimes we say, “I would not wish this on my worst enemy,”

Until then, I long for my father to find rest, to fly away on the wings of a dove,* which is perhaps masquerading as a crow...

They killed a man whose words still echo forgiveness in the spaces under the Walnut Street Bridge, even the unspoken ones they know not...

I wanted to leave this earth, join you and your son. You wanted nothing of it. Sent angels to rip up my passport, keep me in the country.

I am expatriate, my motherland, the one that birthed and then betrayed me, no longer my home. No songs of redemption, no longer

The forest never sleeps and also cries for redemption, the soul of the Amazon, the trees of life-giving air.

I’m sorry.  I didn’t recognize you, in the soiled coat and blue jeans, shuffling along the subway station, praying for money from heaven.

Can we exit this interlocked sequence of oppression and reflexive violence?

Becoming untouchable takes time. Start young. Instill quiet oppression. Reinforce the stakes, ignore the quakes, the terror. Regular...