Ashley Needles

Feelings linger. I know it isn't logical. I'm not talking about my feelings for Art, those were real. No, I'm okay with mourning a man who was my best friend and love for four years. I wish it were him I think about when loneliness creeps in. Instead, with winter's chill shadow knocking at my psyche, I think about the man after him. The delusional insane obsession I've had since Art died. "It isn't real," I tell myself. It lasted just a month. It wasn't a deep soul connection, just physical comfort. Regardless though, my mind returns to the man who taught me so much so fast and who walked out of my life so quickly leaving behind a shattered shell held together by a few stitches of kindness. I was at my best friend's house, dressed in a short skirt for the man with stormy blue eyes watching me play with my friend's eldest child. The child wacked my face with full heavy key ring. I held back the tears and told him that wasn't ho...

What I really need and what every woman really needs in this world isn't cut stems of wilting death, withering away in glass vases, but something like this:   We need tools to keep the people around us accountable for their actions! Phones are useful but sometimes we need protection walking to our cars at night after work when our hands are full. Do you know how scary it is to finally get off work and go to your car at night to discover a stranger waiting for you? I was lucky the guy was waiting to give me a rose but that he spent three nights waiting and watching to discover which car was mine to do this freaked me out. There was also the time I took the garbage out of Burger Supreme in Provo when I was nineteen and had to race back in because some random homeless guy was there who shoved me against the giant dumpster to fondle my breasts. I got him off of me but that was one of hundreds of instances that contributed to my current state of being some what of a...