It’s nothing, really, just a wide mouth mason jar, glass catching and bending Light the way gifts do, filled with our favorite homemade granola, Mexican Hot Chocolate, the flavors warm and rich and spicy, like life. It’s nothing, really, but somehow, it’s also everything when I walk it outside to the kind driver who takes […]

It’s funny how injuries live on long after they’re gone, like ghosts. They even change how we move, but then, inevitably, we bump against them and curse! ourselves for forgetting, smarting over the suggestion of a bruise arising again, as dark as a brooding storm. Everyone knows that once you’ve bitten your tongue, it’s hard […]

The brush, she, my sister, my friend, dips in vibrant pink, like satin ribbons or the tender curve of a lip, and then deftly applies, with the flick of her wrist, a twist, the kind of poetry artists use to produce a delicate petal, cupped and open, waiting, maybe, for rain. I watch her work, […]

It’s as we pray at the end of the day, our bodies bending toward the ceasing, that Riley remembers loss, that she hears Kevin asking after comfort and peace for grieving loved ones and makes a sound like she’s been struck, a deep, penetrating noise that seems to rise from deep within her, trembling in […]

Kevin and I have curiously studied the rule of margins for years, have even developed a lingo for our real-life observations that, where little margin exists, something will always come along to take up even the tiniest bit that remains. Ask me if I feel squeezed, especially this time of year, and if, in the […]

Oh! Riley says, sitting up straight, this a surprised, delighted sound bubbling up from her heart, an awareness awakening her, if temporarily, from a tired after work descent, her spine having already begun its curl toward sleep. “I heard back about my requests.” Keep awake, Christ urged repeatedly, because it takes intentionality to disengage from […]

I wait for an hour to speak to someone in customer service, my phone on endless hold, that looping tinny music interspersed with your call is important to us messages playing in the background as I work while also, I am queued online for a chat window. When I clicked the button to chat with […]

Here we are, rolling out of bed at 5am on a Saturday, Kevin and me all stumbles and limping, our voices stolen overnight, and so, we communicate with light touches and knowing nods, passing on our way around the bed to open drawers, dragging ourselves awake.  We groan and creak and sigh without knowing we’ve […]

Maybe it started with the letterboard sign that caught my eye in September, when it shouldn’t have felt like Fall outside but did, when something inside my heart pulled me toward surrender. I decided to actively anticipate the change of season, to savor the subtle shifts in the light of day, the darker nights, the […]

In the hallway, I find dots of blood, tiny and faint, each pressed by the ball of a foot, maybe, into a miniature Rorschach, the lot of them an evidential path of wounding I follow from just outside the laundry room all the way down to Adam’s bedroom door, where they abruptly end. I am […]