Author: Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

First Four Seasons

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 Judith Staff

First Summer We have been in Canada about a month, and the constant feeling of shock somewhere deep in my tummy, is not abatting. I am just eight years old. I am lonely, bored, and my parents have a lot to do, so my mother takes me out to the Read more

Moon’s Song

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022 Judith Staff

If you desire to measure how far you have trekked, across meadows and deserts of emotion, and oceans of storm-filled nights, look back toward the horizon. For there remains, soaked in your tears, the crumbling bones of all your relationships. The harmful sort, which once upon a time took hungry Read more

The Bus Ride

January 10, 2022January 10, 2022 Judith Staff

Evening afoot she waits at the stop. Mind elsewhere, on her day, or merely tired, distant. Boarding the empty bus, relieved for warmth, quiet. Town’s edge – but what is happening? Where are you going? She demands, nearly screaming now, You should have turned back there! The bus lurches down Read more

FLATLINED

December 5, 2020August 13, 2021 Judith Staff

chemically gagged pharmaceutically silenced. swallowing tiny thieves of nuance and vibrancy until depth and hue crumble like damp sawdust into a shallow, timeless grave of monotony nestled by my heart an internal barometer measuring emotional vitality no longer responsive a total obliteration of moods each one simply truncated where stormy Read more

Birdwatcher

July 10, 2020August 13, 2021 Judith Staff

Why does our new house always feel dark? Some nights, the darkness steals my sleep, seeping from the corners of my bedroom. Is the house gloomy, or the people inside? The backyard looks so light, so bright, but it’s merely the snow’s reflection. My mother has a new bird book, Read more

The Wrong James

February 2, 2020August 13, 2021 Judith Staff

I was about 21 years old when I began studying for a degree. Disinterested in furthering my education, it was not my wish, but my mother convinced me I would be a failure in life if I didn’t study. As I already believed I was a failure, going to university Read more

Shame On You

October 16, 2019August 13, 2021 Judith Staff

“Drunk. Hot. Easy. A cocktease….“ No. Fuck that. Fuck them. Do not bathe in the steam rising off sordid pools they lured you into, those filled with twisted recollections of reality. Coveting your butterfly touch and those sexy, soft eyes as coat hooks on which to hang their cloaks of Read more

Girls Like You

July 1, 2019August 13, 2021 Judith Staff

Junior high is a jungle. Five hundred kids, ages twelve to fourteen, in a tough, urban school on the edge of the city center. There are fights every day, boys with nosebleeds, rumors about drugs, things thrown in class, teachers yelling. Chaos; I barely learn a thing the whole two Read more