41Jul 8, 2016
They are not, of course, in the butterfly garden where they are supposed to be, not in the lane past the pretty picket fence and that rough, weathered gate that threatens splinters. I sit down on a bench in front of a high, knotted hedge thick with vines, allowing my eyes to wander over wild, delicate […]
42Jun 17, 2016
Evening at the beach, and I’m swaying in the porch swing, pushing my toes against the deck planks. It’s too dark to see the ocean from where I sit, but I can just make out the faint, ever-changing lines of white caps, like fine, thin sketch marks adding dimension to shades of black and blue-gray. […]
43May 27, 2016
From the worn table–an oval thing, brown like the hull of a nut and rubbed with a history of fingers, a delicate kaleidoscope of tiny butterflies drifts, falling lightly on our living room carpet. I scoop up the thin, papery things with one hand as I walk by, kneeling just the moment, and carefully dump […]
44May 20, 2016
Waiting at the stoplight on the way to school, drizzle dotting the windshield, and I grab my phone to take a picture of my daughter. The cloud-cast makes her skin look more alabaster than olive-gold; makes her blue-gray eyes look stormy. “What’re you doing?” She asks. But I catch the hint of a smile, just […]
45Jan 29, 2016
Mom, what will you write about today? Her question is a gift; a jewel in my palm. She sits at the bar looking very nearly sixteen–golden head bent over her phone and all those little flyaways catching the early light; a cup of coffee just south of her hand, steaming; a dozen bracelets sliding […]
46Oct 16, 2015
The hour turns, and my friend waves me over, patting the chair beside. All evening, we have all only wanted to surround her, this iron-strong friend strong enough yet to admit that she needs us to lift her. It takes a brave woman to allow the veil to fall—whisper-light—from her face, to sit uncovered and honest, to […]
47Oct 9, 2015
So many times this week I’ve whispered the words—running under stunning blue skies; exhaling beside grassy spaces where dewey spider webs glow like hundreds of silver threaded veils seemingly abandoned by impetuos ethereal brides; in the dying light of the afternoon, when the work still stretches, teasing at the edges of impossible. I say it […]
48Oct 2, 2015
I hear the door open, and with that sound comes the volume of her sadness, the distinct sound of brokenness. Tears always steal her breath the way they still steal mine, and before I can see her I hear that awful gasp, the way she hungrily stuggles for air. She cries with her whole body. The […]
49Sep 11, 2015
I love wide, open spaces, those places that could never be arm-measured, that overflow conceivable depth and stretch further than sight; spilling over, covering completely, unbound, unheld, uncaptured. So today, because I need reminders, God sends us in a different direction, turning left on a road instead of the usual right, and this just as I […]
50Jul 24, 2015
In the morning, the rain comes, and I do what I have determined to do more and more these days: I stop to see, to gather up the feeling of the breeze lifting my hair away from my cheeks. I spy a plump cardinal hiding just inside the gardenias bobbing gently by the steps, an elegant […]