Let's Show The World That Something Good Can Come From Something Bad
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Our Team
Our amazing team of regulars and part-time volunteers are committed to helping others. We take our convictions and turn them into action. Think you would be a good fit? See our form below for more information!
Our History
Seeing a need for energetic, nonprofit work in this area, we formed our organization to provide sensible solutions. We started within the confines of the South Carolina Department of Corrections when the founder Jermaine "Angel" Smith wanted to not only change his life, but also the lives of others like him. With direction from God Mr. Smith enrolled in Stratford Career Institute where he graduated with honors and received a diploma in creative writing. From there he worked aimlessly to reach the people who he knew could make his vision come true , although he suffered many setbacks he refused to give up because the lives of others counted on it. And because of that we are healing hearts one word at a time.
Our Mission
Thought Jot is a cognitive self-change program incorporated with the standard components of a creative writing course. It's our goal to better the lives of those who are incarcerated by not just giving them an infallible skill but also creating a sustainable income, which in turns helps the community from the inside out by giving the members a sense of pride knowing that they have worked hard to complete the program and now are able to provide for their families. We also strive to combat recidivism and bring each and every member closer to God.
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SOme Of The Talent
Forgiven By: Moxie St.James
Sofia Lovelace groaned as the gift and curse of technology jingled on her bedside table, pulling her out of a pleasant and well-deserved slumber. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since she'd officially went on vacation, and already some idiot was disturbing it.
She rolled over and blindly searched the nightstand for the ringing phone.
“Hello?” She said groggily into the receiver.
“How have you been?” The velvety voice asked.
Her eyes sprang open, and her heart began to beat wildly in her chest as she instantly recognized the bass-filled voice.
“Mel?”
“Long time no hear beautiful,” he said.
She threw back the covers and sat bolt upright in the antique canopy king-size bed.
“How dare you call me.” She said and then slammed the handset back in its cradle.
The cordless rang again. This time she shot it an angry glare. Did he have the nerve to call back, she thought. She grabbed the receiver and spoke slowly.
“Hello?”
“Sofia!”
“Why are you calling me, Mel?” She snapped. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Sofia, please don’t hang up,” he pleaded, “I need to talk to you.”
"Talk!" She chided, looking around her elaborately decorated bedroom as if she was expecting the ghost from her past to magically appear. "we could've talked ten years ago. But instead, you just…."
Her words trailed off as the emotions she had buried so long ago suddenly swam inside her chest.
“I know, that’s why I’m calling,” he said. “I owe you an explanation.”
Sofia swung her long, smooth, chocolate legs over the side of the bed and sat there waiting for his excuse.
“I’m listening,” she said, her sweet tone laced with sarcasm.
“No, not like this. I need to do this face-to-face,” he said. “Can you meet me at our special place in an hour?"
She knew what he'd meant when he said their special place. He was talking about "Mudds," located on the east side of Miami Beach, which allowed the local talent the opportunity to express themselves through spoken word and music.
“I don’t think that’s wise.” She said, tucking a few strands of her raven shoulder-length hair behind her ear. “Besides, what makes you think after all this time you can just call and make demands?”
She heard him exhale his disappointment.
“It’s not a demand. Please, Sofia.”
Why should I?” She declared. “You hurt me, not the other way ‘round.”
She stood and walked barefoot across the cool marble floor.
“Because- “His words caught in his throat. “I still love you, that’s why.”
Love, he can’t be for real, she thought. She paused at the heavily draped window and gazed out at the birds enjoying an early breakfast at the feeder she’d installed last summer. The sun was a warm glowing orange ball in a cloudless blue sky. It was going to be a gorgeous day.
“How can you say that, Mel? Not only did you break my heart, you totally humiliated me in front of my family and friends.”
"Because I do," he said," I've never stopped. And I know I hurt you; I'm truly sorry."
"Well, you sure as hell gotta funny way of showing it."
"Just meet me, and I'll make it right," he said.
Make it right! Impossible, the damage had already been done, she wanted to say but remained silent.
"Sofia, I need this, you need this, let me see you? If you ever loved me, you'll do it."
She turned from the window and looked at the crystal clock located on the small table beside the red wing-backed chair she often sat in to read a good book. It was nearly ten. She must be out of her mind to even be considering seeing him, she said to herself. But she had to face facts; she had never stopped loving him despite her pain.
“An hour?” She asked.
“One hour, give or take, “he said.
“Okay,” she exhaled.
“So, you’ll come?”
"Yes, although it's really against my better judgment."
Sofia crossed the room and took her place back on the edge of the bed.
“Thank you, Sofia, this really means a lot to me, “he assured her.
"It's not for you; I'm doing this for me. I need closure."
“I understand,” he said. “Sofia?”
“What, Mel?”
“I love you.”
She took the phone from her ear and replaced it back in its base without words. She pulled open the polished mahogany nightstand drawer. She removed the leather velvet-lined box she had neatly tucked in the back. She rested it on her lap and lifted the cover. She stared at the contents: memories of what could have been. She picked through the items until she found what she was searching for. There it was at the bottom of the box. She held the folded single sheet of paper in her hand for a moment before she began to read the words that had broken her heart of those years ago.
Relationships, like life, are often complex. But whoever said that it was better to have loved once than not to have loved at all must not have ever experienced the cruel beast known as amour, especially when in rare form inflicting a lifetime of pain.
When Sofia arrived at the café, she didn't go in immediately. She sat behind the wheel of her gunmetal gray Aston Martin contemplating whether she had made the wise choice of coming here. Of course, she had wanted answers to the many questions that had deprived her of sleep many nights. But at what cost? More humiliation? More heartache?
She gazed at her reflection in the rearview mirror; even at thirty-six, she was still breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin, flawless in every way, seems to refuse to age. And her eyes the richest of browns: bedroom eyes they called them couldn't hide the turmoil dancing madly in her head.
She exhaled a deep sigh.
“It’s now or never, “she whispered to herself, exiting the car.
Sofia paused at the café’s entrance, spoke her mantra one last time then stepped inside.
The place was empty except for a lanky blond in a bright sundress. She was poured over a textbook at one of the many round wooden tables.
Sofia looked around. The place had not changed much since the last time Mel had brought her here all those years ago. The stage with the spotlight above it was still there, along with the same eccentric art on its dark green walls. She did notice that whoever owned the place had added several different color loveseats. She surmised to give it a more comfy-type vibe.
Not wanting to interrupt the girl and her studying by asking her had a gentleman come in. She just took a seat at one of the tables near the only window.
She checked her watch; more than the hour had passed. Was she too late? Had Mel grown impatient waiting on her and decided to leave? She searched the dimly lit room again with her eyes, knowing she had not missed him.
She gave up and watched a young interracial couple out of the floor-to-ceiling window walk together. She thought about how Mel would walk with her holding hands as they talked about the simple things in life and how they both loved to eat peanut butter off the spoon.
She smiled at the trip down memory lane.
“Sofia,” the voice called, spiraling her back to reality.
She turned to see Mel standing there. Her heart skipped a beat as she stared into his captivating hazel eyes. He was still the tall marvelous work of physical perfection. Maybe even better, she thought.
“Hi, Mel,” she said.
“I thought you’d changed your mind about coming.” He took the chair opposite of her.
“Sorry I’m late traffic on 95 was a nightmare, “she lied. “I thought you had got sick of waiting and left yourself since I came in and didn’t see anyone in here other than the girl over there.
"I was in the restroom, and it doesn't matter as long as you came," he said smiling." Did you have time to eat anything?"
Sofia shook her head.
“No.”
“Care for something?”
“Won’t hurt.”
"Linda, can you be the doll you are and bring me and the lady two demitasses and some of that awesome pound cake, please?" He called to the girl with the textbook.
“Sure thing, Mel,” the girl said, stuffing her pen in her hair and vanishing to the back of the room.
“You know her?” Sofia asked.
“Sorta, I’m a regular. Why are you jealous?” He joked.
“Hardly,” she replied tersely.
He smiled. "Sofia, you look amazing," Mel said, reaching for her hand across the table.
Sofia pulled her hand away.
“Thanks, but I didn’t come all this way for complements, Mel.”
"Straight to the point you haven't changed a bit, I see."
Silence.
She watched him take a sharp breath as she adjusted her red croc-skin handbag on her lap.
“This isn’t easy for me,” he said.
“Is it supposed to be?” She asked with an arched brow.
He gazed at for several long moments before he spoke.
“No, I guess not,” he said, “but I have to do it.”
She waited for Mel to continue.
"As I told you earlier on the phone, I have never stopped loving you."
“Point?” She said matter-of-factly.
“Point is you deserve the truth- “
As he began to talk, the girl with the textbook arrived with their order. She placed the food and drinks on the table, smiled, and went back to her book.
“-as I was sayin’,” he picked back up,” I love you and have never stopped thinking about you. And I can only imagine the anguish I put you through when I did the unthinkable.”
Her gaze was intense. “Can you?”
“Yes, because it hurt me too. In fact, it hurt me more than you would believe.”
She sipped her coffee.
“That’s hard to tell, Mel.”
“Why?” His voice raised slightly.
"Why! I'll tell you why Mel James. You left me on our wedding day. And not only did you dump me at the alter, but you also weren't even man enough to do it in person. No, you wrote a sorry-ass note," she said and then reached into her bag and pulled out the old folded sheet of paper. "Do you know how that made me look, especially since I went against the wishes of my parents for you? They said you were no good for me. They said you would only hurt me in the end, and I be damn if they were not right."
She sent the note sailing across the table as tears welled in her eyes. He sat silent and watched the paper fall to the floor like the last leaf of a dying tree spiral to the earth.
"I'm sorry, but you don't understand what I was going through," he said, plucking the note from the ground and reading it.
"well, make me, or at least try to anyway."
"Damn, can't you see that's what I am trying to do? Sofia," he said, going over the words he had written one last time. "Do you remember the first time I brought you here?"
How could she forget? It was the night She'd fallen in love with the man of her dreams and the unmistakable root of her misery.
"Yeah, but what does that have to do with the tea in China and its price?" She asked, murdering her cake with the water-stained fork.
"Everything," he balled up the biggest mistake of his life," Because every day I relive that night in my mind. The way you looked in that Lil black dress, your perfume."
He smiled. "I can even remember the beginning lines of that poem the Sista with the bamboo earrings was spittin'. "As we travel mentally, physically, and emotionally on the path to the highest elevation of understanding, allow me a pause to place a kiss of passion upon your body," I think she titled it "Eight Kisses of passion.""
He went for her hand again; this time, she did not resist.
“They forced me to do it,” he said, his voice wounded.
“They, who’s they?”
He sighed heavily.
“Steven and Peggy.”
“My Parents?”
"Mostly your father; he hated me. He hated the fact that you loved me; A nobody, a poor, uneducated man who was born with HIV because his crack-addicted mother was selfish. Sofia, you loved me before I loved myself."
She narrowed her eyes. She was thinking, would they? Of course, they would, she thought.
"What about the fishing trip to the Keys? I thought you two hash things out? I asked you, and you described it as beer, fishing, and bonding."
“It was all lies.”
More pain.
"Your dad and mom planned the trip so that your father could tell me that he would die and play cards with Satan before he'd let his princess marry nothing like me," he said.
“What…. I don’t understand, Mel?” Her mind was spinning.
"The trip was a front, Sofia. It was your folks' last efforts. They had it all planned out. Your father would take me to the Keys, butter me up so that he could hit me with the curveball. While you and your mother went about getting everything ready as if there was really going to be a wedding."
"So, what did he do to make you…."
More humiliation.
“Does it matter?” He asked. “It was done.”
"Yes," she said, stricken.
“He gave me two options,” he said.
“And they were?”
He squeezed her hands. They were damp with sweat; she was angry.
“Take five Million and disappear, or make you a widow.”
She withdrew her hands at his words and wiped them on her eight hundred-dollar black jeans.
This was crazy.
"So, you're saying that my father paid you to crush me?"
Silence.
“Why?”
She thought about the why and answered her own question. Because she would have to know the truth one day. But why did it take him ten tears to do it?
"Why did it take you this long before you decided to tell me this?" She asked, swimming in new and all too familiar emotions.
“Guilt, fear, insecurity, recovery.”
“Recovery?”
“Yes, recovery.”
“From what?” She asked. “Were you ill because of the virus?”
He swallowed hard and stood to his feet. She watched him undo the buttons on his white shirt to reveal a long scar that ran from his chest to the top of his navy slacks. He spun around so that she could get a good look at the sister wound that ran from the base of his neck to the small of his back.
"About a mile down the road, I realized that I would rather lose my life knowing that you knew I loved you. So, I turned around to head back, but your father had planned for this as well."
“What do you mean? Did he do that to you?” She pointed at the ugly scars that indicated that Mel and Death had been intimated.
"He knew I loved you and that I would come back, so he had the break line cut in my car. So, as I clocked a hundred on the dash to get back to you, I was unaware that I had no breaks."
"So, what happened?" She asked, confused as ever.
"A semi pulled out in front of me. I tried to stop, but it was hopeless. I went right under it."
Beads of liquid sadness ran down Sofia’s face. The awful picture of Mel’s tiny black sports car being smashed by the truck flashed in her mind.
“Mel, I’m so sorry…. I had no idea,” she sobbed.
"It's not your fault. I spent the past ten years of my life fighting to be normal again. It was my punishment from God. But he gave me a second chance to right my wrongs," he said, then stood and limped over to her.
She hadn’t even noticed he had a limp.
“Mel, I don’t know what to say. I am lost for words.”
He got down on one knee and slide a ring box from his pocket.
"Don't say anything yet," he opened the box and removed the ring. "I lost you once. I won't lose you a second time, be my wife."
Is It Me By Moxie St. James
I just had another one of those crazy episodes where I am sleeping, and I stop breathing. But they do not scare me as much as dying alone and unloved does. I feel around on the bed in the dark for my cell phone. I find the charger cord and trace it to the phone that has fallen to the back of the bed. I push the button on the side for it to illuminate and squint pass the spider web fine cracks on the screen. The battery has not charged fully because my ridiculously cute and ambitious blue pit bull puppy Nala has made it apart of her dietary regimen.
She is not really mine; I am just keeping her for a friend who is moving and is not allowed to have pets at her current location, but I have had her since she was seven weeks old, now twelve, and we have built sort of a bond. I do have dogs of my own, a yorkie named Kali and a very pregnant white and brown malti-poo named Patches.
I sigh deeply at the thought of having to fork out ten bucks for a new cord, but I become even more depressed when I read the only text message I care about. It’s from Malia the girl who I am hopelessly in love with and it says, “No, sorry ” with three emojis of the girl shrugging her shoulders. I plunge the phone back into darkness and stare at the textured ceiling in my bedroom. I had asked her if she would spend time with me for my 36th birthday which is tomorrow.
But it really does not surprise me that she said no. I have been trying to take her out on a date now for the past year. And every time there is an excuse or whatever these losers she is drawn to name might be. I don’t like to think of my situation or how I feel as a case of sour grapes because they have her and I don’t. I am use to being alone, the story of my life. Yet, the real question I have is how do you love a woman who has never experienced it? Real love anyway. I often dwell in my secret place of prayer when it comes to her. I ask the Creator to make me a proverbial rain so that I can soften the hard-red clay that has encased her heart and prevents her from loving genuinely.
I take another deep breath and gently rub Patches’ swollen tummy. I smile at the movement of one of five babies. Kali does a few circles on my smooth brown bare chest then snuggles back down to continue her slumber. I figure she does this because she enjoys the rhythmic thud of my heart. Nala is snoring in the corner on her doggy bed probably dreaming of what to chew up next, oblivious to my emotional state of mind.
Malia and I had met on the job. It was a manufacturing plant that made seats for a number of BMW vehicles. I was a new hire, and she was assigned to train me. Oddly enough I was instantly attracted to her considering that I had been gay for most of my life and had never been with a woman sexually. I was sick of the lifestyle of homosexuality and started to seek God for answers as to who I am and what was my purpose in life.
We talked for most of that night discovering each other, taking note that much of our back-story was the same. She had been to jail early in life. I had done twelve years in prison. She had a broken family and I barely had enough members left living to make up one. The more and more we talked the more I realized this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Yet, with so much in common, we are still so far apart. I surmise it’s because she is more concerned with youth and stamina as opposed to devotion and stability. Then again, it could just be the age difference. She just hit twenty-one this past May and I know how I was at that age: young, free, grown in years, but not mentally.
I spent the past two months of my employment at that job thinking about my next move when it came to showing her that I was not the same person I was, and that I seriously wanted to be the very thing she hoped for all her life. So, I had sprung for a modest diamond ring set in sterling silver. It was on sale at Belk for $120.00 plus tax. Which was good for me because money was tight, and I only made $11.25 an hour through the staffing agency that placed me at the job, but I still wanted to follow my heart.
The joy I witnessed on her beautiful mulatto face that night when I gave it to her was magical. She even did a little sensual dance. Man, it was something. I can see her winding her petite frame in my mind, her long brown hair swaying in sync with her body as she playfully pokes out her moist pink tongue. I shake the thought because of the effect it’s having on the lower half of my body.
I shift slightly and Kali stirs, but retucks her head to form the small ball that she is on my chest. Although I have gone to great lengths to prove my love for this girl it has not stopped her from carelessly allowing another man to impregnate her and shattering my heart. That hurt me more than the unanswered text, phone calls, and even blocking me on social media for this guy. In fact, I was the one who told her that she was going to have a baby. Ever since I gave my life to God, he shows me things in the form of dreams: some of the things are good, others bad, and some I have yet to speak on for the lack of understanding. My pastor told me it’s a gift of the spirit, more like a burden I wish not to bare if you ask me.
Tears of confusion blur my vision. I blink them away and think about the only woman who cares about what I want. I call out to her.
“ Alexa.”
“Yes?”
“Play Mariah Carey’s Vision of Love.”
“Playing Mariah Carey’s 1992 hit Vision of Love.”
The song starts and so do the tears again. I start to think about how I hate it here, not where I am at physically, but mentally. I think about how I hate my voice, the softness of it. I think about how I hate the fact that I am an androgynous looking man who is too often called pretty by both men and women. But does this define me as a man? Is my lack of masculinity a deal breaker? Will my long reddish-brown hair keep me from saying “I Do” and having a family of my own even if it means raising another man’s child?
I take another deep breath; this time Kali takes refuge next to Patches on the bed who has also been disturbed by my crying. Nala is on the downstroke of her rest unfazed by the faint sound of my turmoil. I want to ask God a question , but instead I mouth the lyrics to the song and think “Is It Me”.
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