Like a string of paper dolls we followed hand in hand to the playground and sat We knew people were dying today, but we didn’t know why Sometimes I think we still don’t Sometimes we do forget Every time a whole group of people is wiped away, we say never Every time the world shakes…

Exactly enough time in a pot  of boiling, salted water  brings a good noodle to a simple  balance between flexible and firm.  Perfected pasta will pause for thought while you pour the sauce  so you can swallow its untoughened texture and enjoy just the flavors  you were craving in the first place. Too much time…

Tell me you like my green hair, you think it’s sexy. Tell me you think I’m funny, I make you laugh. Tell me you feel all the things for me, I drive you crazy. Tell me you see me taking care of the body you hold at night (unless it’s too hot so we just…

Like lying atop the bed of a browning garden, growing colder as the sun set on more than 60 years of motherhood, more than 70 years of marriage, more than 80 years of life, she wilted. Like watching a flower that once bloomed bright turn a proud face toward the sunshine before it burned to…

Home is where you live while you learn why you love, Where you fight for truth in the life you dreamed of. Home is a beach with waves that fall together, Where you plant roots in a bed of forever. Home is belonging even when you’re apart,  Where your heart can bleed through your craft,…

I wonder what I’ll say When she asks me one day. Was he handsome? Were you in love? Was it Daddy? It’s no, no, no, and I’ll never know  the wanting glow of a first bow  who agrees to go slow  with the parts of me I had yet to grow.  Maybe I’ll tell her…

So far it’s been mostly nausea, fatigue, headache, and loss of appetite (thank god!). But there has also been a bit of intense irritability, the kind that rips you out of the small amount of sleep you managed to slip into and trips you into arms folded across your tight and pounding chest, throat sore…

His shoes are dusted over with years of street living. His hands are cracked from white-knuckled unforgiving. This old soldier never came home. He sucks the air out of his lungs by the minute He piles trauma and dog shit on the floor and sits in it This old soldier never came home. He holds…

For 40 days and 40 nights, we wash away our sins. We give up all the things we love, and hope that He’ll forgive When we drink or when we think He might not even exist. And when we bruise our knees each night, we rattle off our list Of all the good we’ve done…