Category: Family
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The Enabler
last night it rained the wind blew I couldn’t sleep without thinking of you thinking of how I did not get to say goodbye I always thought you’d be sitting with your siblings and mother saying goodbye to me the rain continued all night and so did the wind the sun and your mother rose…
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Seven
In eighth grade my parents, allowed me to invite six friends to a birthday party. Number seven lived across our backyard fence. When I was not invited to after school parties, I convinced myself I must be number seven. Close enough to the door to hear laughter. Never close enough to be invited in. _____…
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Red pencil
A bowl of rice steams beneath the window, a mother ties back her hair, a child counts sparrows on a telephone wire. Nothing remarkable about the sky. Blue is blue. August is August. The river carries small boats past bridges, past houses, past people who have somewhere to go. The child is told to stay…
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shadow country
poem written to the prompt ‘Shadow’ for a monthly workshop I host It does not matter where into the wild you flee your shadow finds you. It slips beneath cedar boughs, crosses rivers without getting its feet wet, waits behind abandoned barns while you take a pee. _____ Mother told you to be home before…
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Ecdysis
fling your feelings of unworthiness into the void this is not an act of despair this is finding the space to grow _____ finding the space to grow throw your feelings of unworthiness into the void shed despair like an old snake’s skin 6-25-26
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Acceptance
Some would say that love is for joy and when it stops being about joy, it ceases being love. But I say, “Love is for itself.” It gives and takes, caresses and abuses. It is the disease and remedy. We must swallow the prescribed medicine, because refusal is madness, acceptance the cure. You may ask,…
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seas of light
too hot to swim ducks and geese rest in cattail shadows in the shade of my yard I rest, call friends and wonder if the dead never leave us and are just resting in the shade of this life before they begin to swim in seas of light upon light 6-9-26
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peaceful afternoon
On a peaceful afternoon I sit in the shade and imagine myself in Gaza. I sit on a pile of rubble and wave a white flag at the Israeli soldiers. I tell them I’m writing an article about genocide and how it impacts the surviving generations. They cover their faces and call in an air…
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Tests as healing medicine
grit in teeth irritant in shoes once you were sand in need warmth glass remembers fire and you vanished breathe…fog on the surface know you are transformed 5-8-26
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Ten months
Died, such a small word, but oh the weight it drags behind it. It has been ten months and the FAA finally released your personal effects. Your mother needed to sift through where zippers whispered confessions, smudged finger prints gave testimony you were alive. It seemed an invasion of your privacy and I refuse to…
