Morning, Sunday, July 6, 2025, Miami, Florida
I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. The earliest stories came to life when I was nine or ten, seated in a sunlit classroom at Tropical Elementary here in Miami. Back then, English was still a new frontier—a language I was learning word by word, sentence by sentence. I still remember that battleship-gray Royal electric typewriter in Mrs. Chambers’ Special Ed class, its keys clacking beneath my hesitant fingers as I tried to shape thoughts into poems, even if they were awkward, or stories, even if they were simple.
By ninth grade at Riviera Junior High, I had found a new rhythm. A few small articles in The Ram’s Horn, our student newspaper, gave me my first bylines. They were modest steps, but they marked the beginning of a journey. That path would wind through high school and college journalism, into self-taught screenwriting, and eventually, to the deeply personal work of writing the Reunion Duology and its companion story, Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen.
Looking back, I see how each moment—every story, every struggle for the right word—quietly prepared me for the next. Writing, like life, rarely moves in a straight line. But in every detour, I’ve found some quiet wisdom.
Most days I write in plain prose, but once in a while, I tap into the part of me that still marvels at the lyricism of Byron or the raw intimacy of E.E. Cummings.
And so, on this hot and humid South Florida morning, I offer something rare—a poem, drawn from Comings and Goings, inspired by one night, one connection, and the quiet courage it takes to stay:
“The Rest Is Quiet”
Boston, 1984
I reached for the first button
like it held some secret rite—
my hands strangers to me,
my breath a held confession.
She came closer,
not as thunder,
but as balm—
sandalwood and hush,
the kind of calm
that steadies trembling skin.
“Let me,” she said,
undoing cotton and armor alike,
one thread at a time.
There was no rush.
No contract in her gaze.
Just presence,
grace poured into the space between us
until my ribs forgot to brace.
She stood before me,
unshaken, unhidden,
the lamplight catching
on the soft architecture
of her collarbone—
a line leading to everything
I didn’t yet know.
And I stared.
Not because she was bare,
but because she wasn’t afraid.
Because she made silence
look like sanctuary.
Her hands found mine again,
not to claim,
but to offer—
each undone button
a permission
to stay.
I thought of that novel—
the one I never really understood
until now.
The ache of a boy
reaching for something
he couldn’t name,
and the woman
who didn’t flinch
when he tried.
The stereo played on—
Joel threading notes through the air—
but I couldn’t follow the tracklist.
All I remember
is her breath,
her fingers,
the quieting storm
inside my chest.
And how, in the soft margins
between beats and bravery,
she didn’t ask me to be more.
She just stayed.
Because I had.
Jim’s journey begins in quiet moments like this—ones that echo in the spaces between stories.
The Reunion Duology and Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen are available on Amazon in Kindle and print editions.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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