Poetry

For you whose light has been dimmed in an already dark world— For you whose voice has been muted in a loud screaming world— For you who feels lost in a world full of mirrors— Breathe. When every warm body is out of reach, you have the power to hold your own heart with a

Holding hands in the dark, the wash of moonlight spilling onto the sheets. A kiss on my cheek and a hug that lingers long enough to feel the solid warmth of skin and bone. The breath of a sunset sky, and the heat of thunder and lightning pouring cleansing waters from above. A singular burgundy

And I sit here staring at the empty screen and the words simply don’t come out. They litter the floor of this box that surrounds me head to toe side to side bottom to top. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good box that has served me well. This box keeps me smart trustworthy successful

We sit together like this every week, him and I, and talk about it all. It has been almost eight years now since life fell apart for him, a slow motion and steady devastation. Hour by hour, we seek to understand, together, always together, the needle that went in his arm, the fall from grace,

There is a 6:15 am sunrise trying to climb above dark green mountains. The pale light starts to wake a sleepy sky, and creates glowing patches across my morning coffee. I want to trust in whatever makes the sun rise today and every day. I want to believe in the moon that knows to hang

She told me once that her depression was a howl with no end. And in her words, I could see the aching scream, moving like restless wind, rustling the leaves, leaving the night world uneasy and full of a dark distrust. Why wasn’t it okay, she wanted to know, to have no clue what she wanted

In today’s installment of what’s beautiful, I only first found what was broken, until I caught a fleeting glimpse of what laid beneath. My son’s hair a rat’s nest, but shining through were those mischievous chocolate eyes. My daughter sitting on the car seat, a tired and irritable mess of not wanting to go to camp,

In a different life, I took scalpel to skin, cut through fibrous layers of muscle and fascia to the very deepest core of our biology, in bodies dead and alive. I have held a heart in my own hand, felt its indescribable pulsating power. I have witnessed the first cries of a baby being born,

We could wait for a thousand days and nights, a lifetime really, to be given the green light. The sign that we are good enough to try, to shine, to be out there in the world. Showing up exactly as we are without lowering our voices or keeping ourselves small. We could wait for eternities

Today was a day of living slow yet thinking fast, all of which is to say that life unfolded only in my head with little to no direct contact, noticing, or taking it in. I didn’t see the pink bougainvilleas with their glorious and bright petals, singing as they drifted to the ground, pulling me

Sometimes when the loudness around us has settled into a quiet lull, let’s ask each other all the questions that pulse deep within. Like what stories visit you in your dreams, and what do you fear in the 4 am hour, when you are alone and still and the light of the moon falls across

Somewhere between dreaming big and living in small, ordinary moments, I am lost without a compass. There are fleeting thoughts of huts suspended over water in Bora Bora and jeweled palaces in Jaipur and a horizon of tulips in Amsterdam. There are visions of grand stages and published poems and changing lives in profound and

The landscape of my body holds stories that will never be told, perhaps even words that I have never known– ancient dictionaries hidden in the stars of my genes, shaping, deleting, evolving as I move through this life. My heart hold the raucous crashes of Indian rickshaws, and the first caw caw caw of birds

Within us echoes the quiet wail, “There is no time, There is no time.” Time is lost in the striving to fill empty spaces that can never be whole, while clocks spin on and on. If we were to discover time again, perhaps it would be found in melting drops of sun into crimson and

A life lived in poetry is 10:08 pm on Monday night with my journal and pen and a restless, racing mind over tired shoulders that carry the weight of baggage I can’t seem to release. A life lived in poetry is the alchemy of this, the transformation of dying into living, of rumination into red

Monday morning at 7:03 am. A layer of gray is settling across the heavy closed sky and threatening Monday rain. The water creeps into my cold bones that yearn only for the warmth of sun. A pause now to touch paper, hold this pen, see what grows from the heart. Before long, night will arrive,

Anyways, breathe. Breathe. Pausing here, as I write the words, to feel the oxygen filling me as if for the first time. Noticing. This is life. The day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. The waves of exasperation and irritation, and yes, shame and guilt and uncertainty too, dancing amongst the touches of

Creeping through the hallways of my dreams What is true? What is the mind, spinning half awake half asleep half truths? Even in the walking, the peering into dark doorways of possibilities and never chosen paths, the feeling inside is real and alive. How the body remembers this deep desire to discover a room that