I love when people share memories of you
I have forgotten. Like when your big sister
remembered the time we visited your aunt’s
new home, and you, six years old and unstoppable,
were entranced by the decorative glitter glued
to her walls, and while the rest of us were nearby
making food, you stood there in the hallway
and picked at the sparkles until there was a pile
of shine on the floor. “And she was so mad,”
remembers your sister. The memory glimmers
in me like the first stars at dusk, barely there,
but becoming more clear by the moment,
then shining and bright. Yes, that’s what it’s like when
old memories return. I get a shining sliver
of you back. Like finding some constellation
that was always there, I had just forgotten where
to look, and now it’s so present, so true,
I can use its light to navigate my nights.
Archive for November, 2025
And in the End, What Does A Life Add Up To?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, love, math, numbers on November 30, 2025| 4 Comments »
title inspired by Jen Soong’s poem of the same name
Two thousand eleven. That’s what it all adds up to
when we add my great nephew’s birth year with his older
brother’s birth year, plus my daughter’s birth year,
plus my own. Two thousand eleven. This number
relates to my daughter’s ease in the world and
my great nephew’s joy in making art out of acorns
and my own thrill in writing and my other great nephew’s
pleasure in finding numbers to add together. We are,
of course, much more than the sum of our parts.
But we are, also, of course, shaped by such numbers—
how many times we have walked by the sea together,
how many times we have circled the kitchen island playing chase,
how many bounces we have done on the trampoline
and how many pie day races we’ve completed together.
There is this equation in which tag and I Spy and tickling
and peregrine falcons and the tears in my eyes equal
fierce and wild love. There is this piece of paper covered
in carefully shaped numbers. There are the parabolic curves
of our smiles. There is this scent of woodsmoke
still clinging to my hair.
Too Late?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, love, sunset, time, timing on November 28, 2025| 7 Comments »
By the time we arrive at the cliffside
to watch the sunset, the darkness
has already come. But because
of the ink-ish sky, we see thousands
of yellow lights glitter across the harbor.
And moonlight on the water makes
the blackened surface shine. How often
do I think I’m too late, only to find I have
arrived at just the right moment,
the moment in which there is a beauty
beyond the one I knew to wish for.
Like how, when I thought it was too late
to forgive, forgiveness arrived with its
soft and generous hands. Like how when
I thought I was too late to love, love
bloomed like a sunset, radiant and blazing,
and stayed, the way sunsets never do.
Like how I believed I was here to adore the light,
I came to learn how exquisite, how
lavish, how astonishing, the dark.
After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, feast, love, questions, thanksgiving on November 27, 2025| 6 Comments »
After the leftovers have been spooned
into storage containers and the forks
are all snuggled back in their drawers,
when the few who are left are sprawled
on the couch or curled on the floor,
and we’re sleepy-eyed and sated
and telling stories and laughing
at ourselves, this is my favorite part
of the day, when all of the fixing is done
and we settle in with questions we know
we will never answer, and instead
of solutions we are left holding
nothing but ache and love for the world
and for each other, and somehow
instead of despair, this utter lack
of resolution serves up such
gladness—we’re here to meet
what is hard together.
Such Gratefulness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, humility, love on November 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I messed up. Big.
It was, you can imagine,
embarrassing.
My daughter put her head
on my shoulder,
her body warm, her
touch soft.
It’s okay, mom, she said,
her voice gentle and small.
Everyone messes up.
She slipped her hand
into mine. For a long time
we sat that way.
What was big became
small. What was small
became great.
In one humble moment,
the vast arc of love.
I felt myself dissolve
into that arc.
Walking Down 37th Ave in Queens
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cool, new york city, teenager on November 25, 2025| 8 Comments »
Sam teaches me how to
not look like a tourist.
Never look up, he says.
Don’t look back or around.
Don’t pause; keep moving.
Even if you don’t know
where you’re going.
This is when I know
two things: One: I love Sam.
How cool he is. The bullet train
efficiency of his attention.
How he loves me enough
to want to help me be cool.
Two: I will never be cool.
I will always be a tourist,
even in my hometown,
will always be spinning
mid-street with wonder,
finding too much delight
in men with green fuzzy pants.
As if such pants are not
a knob for joy. Not to mention
the scent of almond croissants.
Pink shine of neon in a puddle.
Yellow bow on a baby’s
bald head. But for a night,
I follow Sam, “Like this?”
I ask as I don’t pause to fancy
the basket of persimmons.
But I can’t hide the bright flash
of gratefulness that rises for him.
It’s not cool, but I could pause
all night to admire Sam strolling
down 37th, lanky and brave,
his nonchalance integral to
the togetherness of things.
Ginkgo in Downtown New York
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, endurance, gingko, tree on November 24, 2025| 10 Comments »
They live a thousand years.
This, alone, is enough to
invite admiration. Robust.
Unfussy. They survive drought,
disease, pollution, pests.
They thrive in the midst of sirens
and car fumes, gridlocks and
garbage cans, concrete and horns.
And all across the city today,
a golden fluttering, a radiant trembling
on even the darkest streets. As if
to endure is not enough. As if we are
also here to burn bright, to shine, to offer
to the world every scrap of beauty we can.
One Story of How We Make It Through
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, sadness on November 23, 2025| 4 Comments »
while kneeling in the chapel of despair
finding beside me
a friend
Playing with the Wild Child
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged butterfly, play on November 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
Beckett doesn’t want to play butterfly anymore.
He wants to play band. He wants us to wear
our green plastic glasses with bright lights
that flash on the rims. He wants us to sing
about trains. And train tracks. And more train tracks.
Beckett names our two-person band the Sing Bells.
We have three greatest hits. All three feature
me on tambourine and vocals, Beckett
on kazoo and a small brass bell. I want
to make another song about books. Nope,
says Beckett. More train tracks. I think
of butterfly wings. How even the lightest
touch can damage the scales. How
one way to honor what is wild is by
letting it exist exactly as it is.
So the Sing Bells create another song
about train tracks that go all the way
to Beckett’s house. In his smile, I see
wings unfurling. When he leaps
off his stage for dinner, I swear I see him fly.
Child
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged child, memory, truth on November 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
You will sit naked in the center
of a circle, aware others are watching.
They’ll have white hair and point at you in delight.
You will reach beneath a fence to steal
something small, a black plastic man
with a coat that ripples in unseen wind.
Guilt guarantees the toy never brings you joy.
You name him The Stranger. He will never fit in.
Another time, you will tell your parents you wrote
your own name, then point to the teacher’s
perfect block letters. They will see through your lie,
make you sit in the corner and face the wall.
Eventually you learn being at ease with nakedness
is a superpower. Eventually you learn to delight
in the fact you will always need a teacher.
When We Share Our Broken-Open Hearts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cocoon, community, connection on November 20, 2025| 2 Comments »
Together we weave
an invisible cocoon
fashioned from trust
and listening,
its fibers strong enough
to support a miracle,
soft enough to hold
even the tenderest
of wounds. In just days
a whole galaxy
emerges. See
how we spiral
together.
Sometimes Grief Looks Like This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, forest, grief on November 19, 2025| 4 Comments »
The woman walks into the woods.
How beautiful, she thinks, though
on closer look, all around her
the woods sprawl in wild disarray.
Fallen logs decompose, wood rots,
decays. Bark peels. Brambles scramble.
Berries darken and shrivel. Moss drops off
in great chunks. Broken sticks hang
from broken branches. And all of it belongs.
She thinks how messy grief can be.
The barbed thorns of anger, vast thickets
of I don’t know. Most times there is
no trail at all. Why did she think
human nature would be any different from
nature itself? Oh this messy humaning.
She tells herself, All belongs. All belongs.
The more she believes it, the more she feels
the forest inside her, witnesses how the more
it stretches, the more it rots, the more it grows.
Going Fishing with Dad Four Years After His Death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, dad, fishing, grief on November 19, 2025| 5 Comments »
Dear Dad,
Yesterday I met a man who went fishing.
It was sleety, bracing, gray.
He went fishing anyway. Actually,
as you would say, he went “catching.”
Just one fish, he said, but I felt his gladness,
the modest kind that does not
depend on good weather, the gladness
we feel when we follow the pull
of what we love. Like how I find pleasure
in writing, even when the conditions
are heartache and loss. Even then,
there’s pleasure in standing in the river
of the moment, my whole body attuned,
waiting for the tug. It made me feel close to you dad,
the way his face lit up, just as yours used to
when the talk turned to what was biting.
And now writing to you about my day,
it’s like I’ve cast a line to you. The rain
in here tastes like salt, but oh the gladness
when I feel it on your end, the tug.
Just Before the Grief Retreat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baseball, community, funky town, grief, silly, theme song on November 16, 2025| 6 Comments »
What if it’s like baseball,
Paula says, and you enter
the room the way the players
enter the field, with a theme song?
I look around the spacious room,
chairs and cushions set in a large circle,
flowers, candles and tissues in the center.
What if, when everyone is already
sitting in the circle, you kick open
the door and make an entrance
to this? And she pulls up a tune
on her phone. It begins slow—
strings and cello.
“Funky Town?”
She laughs as I strut
to the center of the room,
knees bent and flapping,
arms pumping in the air
to legato orchestral disco.
I welcome the invisible crowds.
No ball, no bat, no ump, no score.
But there is this field where we gather
to meet what life throws at us.
There are these innings of loss,
these home runs of love, curve balls of ache.
There is this sacred diamond with facets
that light up when we talk about it,
talk about it, talk about it, talk about it,
these gifts when we realize
we are not at all behind in the count.
Oh my broken open heart, I think,
you don’t gotta move on.
You are right where you need to be.
Life Lessons in an Uber in Atlanta
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged city, connection, driving, labor day, life lesson, traffic on November 15, 2025| 11 Comments »
At every opportunity
the man from Pakistan
brakes his own car and
waves his hand
to let the other drivers in.
One driver waves back.
Another offers an okay sign.
Another smiles and nods.
In this way, we go on.
His car is scented of oud,
sandalwood, musk and rose
as he carries humans
from one place to another.
He stops to let in the Jeep
on the right. The driver
joins us to move for a time
in the same direction.
In this way, we go on.
Home Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, generosity, home, light, mom, travel on November 14, 2025| 4 Comments »
In a city where we meet,
mom arrives with thin
rye crackers, dill Havarti,
carrots, fresh raspberries,
a tea kettle, and packets
of peppermint tea—all
things she knows I love.
And sipping right now from
the slender, porcelain
pansy mug she wrapped in
clothes and brought in her suitcase,
I listen in the dark of the hotel
to the soft, even luff of her breath
as she sleeps, and inside it
I hear the light of her, the
generous light, the tender light,
a nectary of light, a clear channel
of light that teaches me something
of how to live in these long, cold
volumes of night.
How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, heartache, ice, immigration on November 13, 2025| 8 Comments »
Teachers and fathers,
bakers and builders,
sisters in plaid shirts
and sons with shy smiles
kicked and punched,
sprayed and tackled,
grabbed and tased
and thrown to the ground,
locked up and jailed,
despised, dehumanized.
What is the heart to do when,
in the face of brutality, we hear
not only weeping, but cheering?
How do we go on?
Maybe you choose to ignore it.
Maybe you tell yourself,
this doesn’t affect me.
Maybe you rationalize.
Maybe you feel your heart break
again and again, as seed walls
must give for a seedling to grow.
Maybe you notice breaking open
is the only way love can go on.
Maybe you turn toward
life, belonging, respect
and ask your longing to grow you,
to guide your hands, your breath.
Maybe you say to the ache,
teach me, bless me, enliven me.
Maybe you listen more deeply.
Maybe you find other broken hearts
with heartbeats that rhyme with your own.
The terror is real. Fear is strong.
We are still here. How will we go on?
One at the Same Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged paradox, sadness, sorrow on November 12, 2025| 2 Comments »
even wearing a real smile
what is heartbroken
still heartbroken
After Effects
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, loss, moss, softening on November 12, 2025| 4 Comments »
In the dream, Craig said to me,
you know, Rosemerry, there
are fifty-eight kinds of loss.
He pointed me to an easel
with a large blank page and handed me
a moss green pen. Here, he said.
Fill them in. There were two columns.
Loss of living. Loss of the dead.
In minutes words filled the page
like clover reproducing in a field.
Loss of time. Loss of breath. Loss of love.
Loss of masks. Loss of shoulds. Loss
of musts. When I woke, I could
no longer name them all. But I
felt them growing in me, feel them,
still, flowerless and powerful,
exploiting any cracks in my certainty,
breaking me down from the inside,
making me softer, softer. Softer.