Author Archives: tarringovaughan

Fourteen A moment of greatness is when one recognizes his own identity.  I was just a young boy, barely fourteen years of age staring down at a blank piece of yellow lined paper with a pencil twirling in my right hand. There were so many things to write but my mind couldn’t find the voice […]

Alone In The Dark I was a silly little boy sitting all along with nothing but darkness staring back at me. Most little boys were afraid of the dark; afraid of what lurked behind closest doors and underneath twin beds; afraid of some indescribable creature reaching to snatch them in their sleep. Not I though. […]

She saved my life on a Thursday, brave “colored” soul; a woman strong – an inspired spirit – stubborn to inequality, showing the world in 1955 that she and everyone else who shared her skin that we did indeed belong.   She saved my life on the first day of December, two decades before my […]

He caught my attention and stared back at me – with beads of gray hair (outlining his face) and an emergence of wrinkles (aging his grace.) He had a cane by his side as he rocked in his chair humming the sounds of all years gone by. His rugged hands explained his sacrifice as he […]

  My heart – once silenced – has been captured and these dreams – once lonely – are now shared with your love.  You taught me how to rise above as I was once lost inside a shell of emptiness, afraid to be me, afraid to expose myself to this world because I was so […]

Coffee Shop Flyers     I think I’ll have a caramel toffee mocha.   “tall, Grande, or venti?”   I could tell she’s been working at Starbucks for awhile.  A fake shine of happiness on a Saturday morning with a line of customers already with their minds made up just waiting…just waiting for a workaholic […]

Captured in admiration between the study of fear and the tranquility of fascination, I watch a flash mob of minds scurry in different directions to beat time to new destinations. Scents of Magnolia cupcakes tiptoe through vanilla halls where voices travel in the walls decorated in architecture of a magical acoustic. I am in the […]

We must come to embrace our literary minds as the great educators of  life because through the many roads we have traveled, we have become the expression behind the sacrifice with our written voices translating our emotional prose into echoes that will travel through time as our genetic ink. We must come to value our […]

It was just me, warm beer, the phone and a clock as I sat there in the dark spotlights of loneliness. A Friday night and I was sitting alone staring off into the past wondering if I said the wrong thing or maybe it was something I didn’t say. The beginning years of my thirties […]

There are no experts in the world of expression. We all read and interpret for different reasons.  As observers we challenge with opinion and gain knowledge by offering knowledge but we can’t critique someone’s heart even if the emotions are misspelled.  I once found myself endlessly free writing in my freshman year writing class.  My […]