family
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My therapist told me to make a list of my wins and this came out on top
I am now surrounded by people who pour life into me, not people who drain the life out of me. These days I only need to show up instead of put on a performance instead of keep my head down instead of parrot a script over and over until I start to believe it. To… Continue reading
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Rituals
My older son asks why his brother needs for him to wave before walking through the Big Kids Door no matter how hard they’d fought at breakfast, why there has to be a high-five, a fist-bump, and a half-bump, in that order, one hug at the bottom step and two at the top every day,… Continue reading
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Family, Grief, and Hydraulics
Washington Memorial Gardens, February 5th 2020 The sky carried the weight of so much gray on its shoulders winter was bracing for another hearty exhale the pale grass, low on the ground, did all it could to keep from shivering. The carpet they reverently rolled out over the adjacent graves mimicked the lush green of… Continue reading
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An Artificial Silence, as in Stillness in a Snow Globe
The news of his passing came somewhere in the middle of the fourth track of her Chet Baker LP. Calmly, she turned the music off and remembered hearing the timer on the dryer, so she headed to the laundry room because she would not dignify death with Jazz at Ann Arbor and preferred to ruminate… Continue reading
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The Wedding Entourage
Soon it will be you and me instead of us and them just count the days down to when we can truly begin to belong to each other without them watching. I know you’re suffocating. It’s hard to love when they can’t even give us silence when they are all talking and we must listen.… Continue reading
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I Will Be Good To You
Don’t close your heart to me, please not tonight not ever I know you’re afraid but you mustn’t be afraid of me we can be afraid together and use that as an excuse to cling all the more tightly to each other but let me in don’t hesitate let me hold you I will be… Continue reading
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I Overheard Sandra Telling June
whose mother’s father was a womanizer; whose Dad is supporting a second family behind her Mom’s back; and who is engaged to a man who cheated on her several times: “Break the cycle, because many women are doomed to fall in love with men who are just like their fathers.” The first thing that came… Continue reading
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The Kind of Woman I Want My Daughter to Be
Everybody’s trying to seduce somebody Everybody wants to be on top of his own desire Everybody’s grappling for power Everybody will do what it takes to have it all Today I resolve to not be overwhelmed by my uniqueness and not be restricted by my commonness I promise to not let anything or anyone make… Continue reading
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You Who Must Not Be Named
You have the life with him the house in the city the kids that have your face and his the ring around your finger the last name while I have his heart. Would either of us care to switch? the romantic in me would not concede this but I’ll say it: you still have it… Continue reading
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Different Feathers
My Dad keeps sixty-four African lovebirds in a cylindrical wire mesh cage five feet tall and two meters across the birds have more colors on their feathers than a sixty-four piece crayon set that was my most prized possession as a child. They do not want for anything. They are covered at night and in… Continue reading
Rampant & Golden 