I looked pretty bad, on paper, that’s my thought, tears clinging to the bottom edge of my jaw like dew drops on a limb, Adam’s chilly fingers reaching for my ear, saying, love love love, asking tentatively, in his silent, tender way, if I’m okay. But listen, I’m actually better than okay today. I glance […]

Gospel, Adam says solidly, from the passenger seat beside me, just the one intelligible word gliding in on a stream of sound from his throat.  He does this sometimes when he really wants to say something, as if he needs to throw the word into some sort of sonic white-water rush, just to move it […]

“Strike on the batter,” Adam murmurs, leaning forward, elbows to knees, brilliant blues intently trained on the ball as it flies through the air and thuds against the catcher’s mitt. The batter steps back from the mound, adjusting his grip on the bat. “Two strikes,” Adam observes so quietly I almost don’t hear, sitting as […]

“No Band-Aid.  Not right now.  I don’t like it,” Adam says, the ‘don’t’ coming across pointedly, as though Riley might otherwise misunderstand the rising volume, the sharp tone, in which he speaks.  She kneels in front of him, her knees pressing into the floor, brassy hair swinging against bright cheeks, gently tugging at the heel […]

Lift me up The music erupts, like a cry, swelling suddenly in the dark. As if before I had no idea I had fallen asleep, I inhale on the crescendo, watching, watching the stage, feeling how the Breath—the ruach, expands and lifts me. In one way or another, we’re all looking for a good raising, […]

As Riley and Adam and I run beneath a sapphire sky, I keep time in blooms like lace gently swaying in trees that just weeks ago still stood beseeching, their empty limbs desperately reaching for God.  And now, it’s as though creation breathes again for the first time, newborn, naked and filling with life, all […]

All I ask, Riley sitting beside me at the bar in the kitchen for lunch, us with our bright-fresh salads, glint of forks, napkins folded in neat rectangles, is, do you want to say the prayer? Umm, that’s okay, she says, I’m good, and then, her voice wavers, and her eyes suddenly fill with tears. […]

“Uh oh, I lost track,” Adam murmurs, when suddenly I press the brake a little too hard and the car lurches, at the exact moment when also I resentfully glare at the massive dump truck lumbering and grunting just ahead, when secretly I tuck a selfish, incredulous why into a shadowy part of my heart. […]

For the better part of an hour, I listen to our engaged couple getting ready to go for a walk. They arrive at the moment together after lunch, having noted and discussed at length that, in the plan I had helped them create for the afternoon, a walk comes next.  I hear them still processing […]

“You with your hand rubbing your forehead,” my friend says to me, chuckling, the computer like a window fusing her home and mine, and us with our rumpled faces, talking quietly in the early morning, talking of life and how it’s hard. I do not, until the moment she says this, realize what I’ve been […]