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#english

28 posts27 participants3 posts today

When the Earth Held Its Breath

When the earth held its breath,
and the trees stopped speaking in green,
I found your shadow pressed into the silence—
not like absence,
but like the memory of warmth
left in a chair
after someone has risen.

I did not call your name.
It was already there,
inscribed beneath the skin of rain,
folded into the hush of wheat fields
bowing under the weight of their gold.
Even the wind carried you—
not as sound,
but as the echo of longing
before the voice has formed.

There were no angels.
Only the dust rising
from the soles of tired workers
who knew love by its weight,
not its wings.
And still, the sun leaned low,
willing to touch the dirt
just to reach us.

You were the breath I took
before understanding what it meant
to be hollow
and still full.
You were the salt in my wound
that sang.

Oh, what a terrible, beautiful thing—
to be stitched into another’s silence.
To be the ache
someone calls home.
To carry within you
the whole cathedral of their absence,
lit by nothing
but the soft, persistent flame
of remembering.

And still—
I would carry it.
The ache, the salt,
the tender ruins of your voice
crumbling somewhere
between my ribs.

I would carry it
into the next life
and the next,
and the next—
not because I must,
but because
even grief
was more beautiful
with you in it.

-- Jeffrey Freeman

A poem I just wrote as I sit here missing Noi Noi (my fiancee). She is so far away its hard, but I hope to see her soon.

I just thought of a new word: fanhole.

Description: the space from where you express brainwashed-sounding opinion about a subject.

Example:

x: Hey, have you tried using chat-gpt to make a Studio Ghibli looking image? OpenAI is the best.

y: Dude, you need to break out of the Sam Altman-shaped fanhole you're in. Can't you see OpenAI are just stealing Ghibli IP?

#word#words#NewWord

To my English speakers who refer to a corporation in the plural (“Company A are…”), aside from convention, what sense or rationale comes to mind when you consider this? I just talked with my girlfriend about regional (continental?) differences in English word use and this one came up.

For the U.S. since corporations are considered a person for some legal purposes, the singular usage (“Company B is…”) makes sense in this case.

So funny...

I was out alone, waiting for the bus. An SUV 🚙 stopped in front of me and the rear passenger window opened. 2 elderly Chinita ladies waved and asked me, in #English, how to get to the mall. I answered in English, thinking that they're foreign.

Then in #Tagalog they asked their driver, "O, naintindihan mo?"

Lola, ba't mo ko ini-inglesan? Di naman ako maarte manamit. Lokal po ako. Pareho lang tayo. 😅! #Philippines #languages #Filipino #Chinoy #Pinoy

I am in urgent job search mode, so I'm gonna throw this out here and see if anything comes of it.

I am a #Canadian, fluent in both #English and #French. I have experience with several programming languages. My strongest proficiency is with #Haskell and #C. I also have a reasonable grasp of #HTML, #JavaScript, #SQL, #Python, #Lua, #Linux system administration, #bash scripting, #Perl, #AWK, some #Lisp (common, scheme, and emacs), and probably several others I've forgotten to mention.

I am not necessarily looking for something in tech. I just need something stable. I have done everything from software development, to customer support, to factory work, though my current circumstances make in-person work more difficult than remote work. I have been regarded as a hard worker in every job I have ever held.