Softer now—my heart and how it melts and pools inside my chest. That’s what happens when you have a child, they say. But still I feed the fear both in my sleep and in my waking hours. Someone is always next. I cradle my sweet boy. The men inside my family all of them always …
We pick oranges. I can see the sweat on his Miami Dolphins t shirt, and on his upper lip.
It has been six months since my grandmother’s passing. Sometimes things like art grow still inside a grieving heart. Perhaps I'm ready to write again. Time will tell. She was singing a year ago, Thanksgiving in our kitchen, Which is why I remember it. Now I watch, through the narrow slit of a newly painted …
Continue reading Lace and Yellow Roses
There’s not much literary inspiration in caring for my grandmother. There is a lot of sadness—a lot of bittersweet hanging like cobwebs from the ceiling. A lot of soaking up a final moment, and yet still thinking you’ll have many more to come. But after a few months, we are now down to our last …
After they die, I crack a cold, cheap beer and comb through my belongings. I look for letters, texts, facebook comments and photographs. Listen to messages to see if maybe, somewhere along line, they’ve left me the gift of their voice. After they die, I scramble desperately for something left of them. Something tangible. Something …
How do you talk about a sunset, without sounding like every conversation about sunsets? At the market, the checker she says, The sunset is beautiful—I love that I can watch it from this window. I say, Oh yes, the colors are stunning. Those pinks, those yellows. Then, when I get home, my mother-in-law, she says, …
Even though I won’t ever see them again, I still carry them. Inside and outside On the lining of my heart And the edges of my brain Beneath my fingernails Or hanging from an eyelash. They saturate my writing and my words Sloping from an s, or cradled in a y. Sometimes, they are even …
Continue reading About the body
The Wild Heart of Life 