This book shelf is a crazy mix of random paperback novels and obscure hardcover biographies from the 60’s. No matter how many times I stare at this shelf, I always seem to find a selection I hadn’t seen before, and so I pull it odown and thumb through its crumbly pages. Then little bugs skitter across the letters and I sort of freak out, and that’s the end of that....
Clusters of red and white brittlegills dotted the path through the back woods. Can’t know for sure which species, there are over 750 in the genus. But if there is any poetry in happenstance, then surely my path was strewn with Russula sanguinaria, bloody brittlegill, the deep, rich red of a life poured out at your feet.
I saw your ghost standing at the top of the steps last night. (your dark hair reflected the beams of that hunter’s moon) You looked down, head tilted, smiling. You walked a few slow paces, stopped. I watched you move from the corner of my eye but did not turn to face you. My ears filled with the roar of my own heart’s blood and I heard nothing else. The...
I text her a photo: pictures of her life hang from clothespins on my kitchen wall. “It cracks me up that you took pics of all of the messy places,” she texts. “Those are all of the beautiful places,” I text back. And it’s true. Every corner of her home held beauty. All things burst green with the late northern spring in the Oran Valley. We stayed at her place...
I could barely believe the beauty of Manhattan Beach. Lemon trees and succulents in nearly every front yard, warm and fragrant breezes, my feet in soft sand after a painfully long winter. I’d never before attended a wedding held outside in the rain, but now I can heartily recommend it: huge smiles peeking out from under dripping raincoat hoods and umbrellas, steam rising from the pavement, the sound of water...
Lately I’ve wanted to be more creative in the physical realm versus digital. Over the past few months I have made a tangible shift in habits and possessions at home, unloading the unnecessary to make room for the analog. I started an analog notebook. It’s a fuchsia Moleskine notebook, and I am filling it with pressed flowers, photos taken on instant film, and my words. I have a homely, stately...
I receive an email from my landlord. Our lease here will be renewed for one final year. Two hours later, I plant the first seeds of spring in newspaper pots and set them under the grow light to germinate. I’m so far behind, but I couldn’t bear to start seeds this year, not with a household move looming. But now, this unexpected change of plans. I think I can catch...
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly. – Epictetus I’m shedding clothing that I’ve kept for decades, things that I’ve held dear. A race t-shirt from 1990. A tailored, pinstriped suit from 1998. A black backless gown with beading along the hemline, the one that used to turn heads. I pull it all from the closet, sort it into piles for consignment, donation, and cleaning rags. What...
I work with my hands to heal: A pencil roll for my sweet artist. New cotton coasters to protect wood. A Minecraft t-shirt repurposed into a journal for a birthday gift to a friend. Pages of pen and ink mandalas, to quiet my mind.
When I am an old woman, I will be a milkweed seed pod drying in the sun, wrinkled and spotted. You will pull me open on the seam until my silver-white floss pushes through, and you’ll blow my sweet, tender seed to the wind until I am an empty shell.