Write from a place of hope
a place under the layers of taut skin
and dirty nails
and seeking mouths
and salted beads created in moments
to remember
dig
through the smog
of words and fears
breathed out by an inconsistent
environment of surviving voices
be thankful
for this place of hope
the light dim through the darkness
but shines still
and beckons
and beacons
cutting ... << MORE >>

What it means to be lucky

when it counts
it's not the blowing on the dice
or scratching away the silvery grey flakes
that gather in the dirty cuticles
of a hopeful hand gripping a lotto ticket
it's not a raffle ticket carefully scrawled with legible letters,
drawn from the billowing bleary red of others just like it
it's not matching the black digits air-popped up on innocuous white balls
read aloud by some tall blonde in ... << MORE >>

Brother

I held you
barely wrapping my little arms
around the baby fat pudge of you
bundled in soft yellow flannel
with gentle blue embroidered bears
you were so heavy then
but I lifted you anyway
watched you smile and gurgle
caught your spit up on my little
pink tutu dress
I imagined our lives
full of barbie play dates and afternoon bike rides
...

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What's in my journal

Something more than words
blot across a page
tears, laughter, hope, fear
frozen in a black or blue or leaden moment
usually, now, not lead, not graphite
smeared and wrought into
a web of something more than a story
than a fact, than me
but it is me, pouring,
flowing like the ink from the pen
as it caresses,
streaks naked truth
across the ... << MORE >>

Blocked.

What I really want to say is
nothing
that I have nothing to say
nothing important or groundbreaking
or earthshaking or restorative or reclamative
or healing or offering
in the way that these women do
in the way that everyone else around me seems to
nothing was so devastating so traumatic
so deprecating
that I have not risen above it
and yet
still ... << MORE >>

Metamorphosis.

I am full of hope today,
the kind of hope that reminds me of what it was like
to be a kid
to have the galaxy fall from the sky and touch your fingertips
to know you could dream
and that those dreams would come true.
that hope sits with me
in my stomach heavy and moving
churning it rises up on the wings of butterflies
caught and flurrying in my digestive track
they ... << MORE >>

Artist.

i need the moments today
the last few left I have
to tick away the quiet anxiety
that has nestled just under the surface
of my skin
i need to hold a paint brush
and splash frustration
and fear and desperation
onto a canvas, away from me
into the soft glow of a blurry
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North of Beautiful

I want to drive along the coast
thrust over the hills and mountains
of my own landscape
pull up to her seas
watch the waves crash and break
and come again
cross the frontier and leave
fear behind on the borderland
gas and go through the forests
and the farm fields rippling
wheat blonde in the wind
I want to ... << MORE >>

Old Quilting Circle

her hands couldn't keep hold of the needle
slowly working its way down the swatches
a stitch for every ten ticks of the grandfather clock
threading together the patchwork quilt of her own
life
in her hands, as they trembled
shaking instructors to the careless
fingers, pricked and bleeding
around the loops of the small fibers
holding everything together
and just a quick jerk
a small distraction
the turn of her eye, the flinch of a nerve
threatening to unravel
the simple life
she had created
cradled in the callouses
of hangnails and dry cuticles
and worn against the ridges
of wrinkles
til the creak of the her wooden chair companion
screeched a protest to fall silent
as the material tugged
slipped
from her hands
to rest quiet
at her uncurled feet.

The Time Between

those mini moments,
the half milliseconds between
dreamscape and white-wash bedroom walls
when the sounds of sleep still sing
a gentle lullaby over the capricious
whistle of the alarm

those mini moments
the half milliseconds between
white-wash bedroom walls and dreamscape
when the blur of focus weighs heavy against
the eyes and threatens to quiet
the tongue

those mini moments
...

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