I am going to tell you a story, and you will probably not believe me.
I’m deciding that’s okay…
Tag: featured
brave words for fearful people …
Go out into the world:
Go! Yes, you — though you are fearful and fragile and small.
Go broken-winged and bent-boned and beauty-starved… Lovesick. Stardrunk. Skydizzy.
Or go sharp-eyed and sober, if that’s how it is — the hunger for the light a clenched fist in your stomach …
other tongues …
I have spent my life in the company of those who like to talk about words. Their power (so they say) mightier than the sword.
But words are just one language, and — hear me — there are others. Ones I am just now beginning to learn…
an elegy – almost – for the wild children who grew up…
… We were half-wild creatures, messy mistake-makers, just beginning to understand how to live lightly. Hooting and hollering through the forest. Leaping and dodging through the brush. Bird-calling and doe-stepping. Howling like wolves …
the imperfectionist’s prayer
oh, Lord, leave me …
… undone.
heal me, but don’t –
(forgive me
for saying it) …
a metaphor in the beating of wings …
… I watched them leap the street again, spooling up into a cyclone, a thunderhead, a swell. In a moment, their shape shifted into something else entirely: something animal.
Or perhaps something not animal at all …
on shadow & light, sunshine & silhouettes … & seeing my own magic
This evening.
I am walking the dog at sunset, stopped at a street corner, waiting for traffic to pass. I am lost in thought.
Suddenly a car flashes by, and for the briefest moment I glimpse …
when eating a peach is an act of transcendence…
… And I thought, then, of the days when my eating disorder taught me a different language. When food meant fear, and starvation felt like a form of power.
When everything I put in my mouth seemed like a threat…
a promise, left on a park bench in the frost …
…I had it already prepared: the words inked on the shiny green undersides of six acuba leaves, with their brilliant gold speckles. I stuck a hand in my pocket and ran a thumb over their leather skins.
Yes. This place. This…
