Convincing yourself you’re complete — A nostalgia for what you think never was, memories present themselves now in the themes of true loves lost and childhoods gone, yet those years were still soaked in sunshine sparkling in the spokes of bicycle wheels and in the surface of the lake in summer when you swam into his sphere In their presence, they were exactly what you…

The truth hurts — The stinging spreads out from where the thoughts pricked, sharp as thorns. Logic’s sharp edges and keen details pierced the soft beliefs that cushioned the weight of reality when it became too heavy. Reason whetted its sound blade, poking holes in my faith. The realizations that were released bled across my brain, mind in bloom. I swallowed the bitter…

Creating a thirst to be quenched — Mixed water with salt and drank from a cup to inspire a thirst Drinking’s never enough when you’re wet to the bone from the grief taken up I’d carried it like a woman who spends her day dipping into the river and bringing home buckets balanced on her back, careful to keep it clean, precious and…

A poem about him — He, standing there this summer as the dusk rises up from behind him and reaches over our heads He takes it down from the sky and folds it under our feet The night is draped around us, and we bask in each others’ velvet breath​​ The warmth rising up from our bodies mingles with the cool night air he’s captured…

A poem — I had a home I had a dog, no babies but a man We had a life We had a dream, were young and crazy way before I couldn’t for the life of us give to you from what you had broken — so slowly, but surely every afternoon when you came home to beer and the backyard instead of me, seemed the sun always…

The burden of the season — I used to take pictures of shadows on the wall cast by clear glass jars filled with wilting flowers — picked weeks before on a day that I tried after a warm stretch reached through the shiver of winter — as the first signs of the sun soaked in through the windows looking…

A requiem for remembering — Acknowledge what was: past experiences circumstances birthed that took form then turned soft from repeated handling, became watered down by the washing of my hands as I tried to absolve my part in their end, what was never meant to be: dreams that didn’t come to pass, not near as brilliant as the…

Coming back to wholeness — In the absence of you, I find myself becoming complete, a crescent waxing on its way to full and gleaming like the perfectly round pearl I thought I’d find as a child cracking clams under the pier at the lake, not knowing the harm in forcing open what is tightly shut, searching for something to adore…

“I get all the news I need on the weather report”- Simon and Garfunkel — The boxes blink back at us from the wall where we hung them up and flattened them to create clearance for the hard-hitting stories to fall when they drop, breaking at 5 o’clock on the living room floor, removed their antennas to prevent interference from the dread rising up after being released from cases cracked wide open —…