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Archive for November, 2025

When We Share Our Broken-Open Hearts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , 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.

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 Sometimes Grief Looks Like This 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , 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.
 

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Going Fishing with Dad Four Years After His Death

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.

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The Mirror

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 17, 2025| 12 Comments »

Overnight, every red leaf on the maple tree
has fallen to the ground and formed
an imperfect pool of red around
the solemn trunk, the dark bare limbs.
This is how it was the day you died.
In an instant, the tree of me went
from radiance to nakedness.
Impossible to hide.
Years later, I see what I couldn’t
see then—how beautiful to be that bare
when all that is lost is still so close,
when the limbs of the body
still remember the exact texture
and weight of what they once held.
How sacred that nakedness,
that opens us to the world.
I have grown so many new leaves.
That sacredness has never left.

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Just Before the Grief Retreat

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

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Life Lessons in an Uber in Atlanta

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

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Home Away

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

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How

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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?

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One at the Same Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 12, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
even wearing a real smile
what is heartbroken
still heartbroken
 
  

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After Effects

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , 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.

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