Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘childhood memory’

In the Wing Dedicated to Heartbreaks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 13, 2026| 12 Comments »


after reading “The Reassembly” by Isabella Nesheiwat
 
 
In the museum of the chest, I find
on a dusty back shelf my old favorite lunch box
with Hollie Hobbie’s picture raised
on one metal side, her big blue
bonnet covering all of her face.
The box is dented from where Donny,
a grade older, kicked it that day
when I walked the shortcut home from school.
He told me Holly Hobbie was for babies.
I arrived home feeling dented, broken, too,
embarrassed to be myself.
I run my fingers over the cool silver latch
and open the lunch box again.
Empty now except for the old story
I told myself about my unworthiness.
Instead of listening to the story,
I listen to the emptiness. Hear my heart
beating true in my blood warm chest.
The heart says, What is infinite in you
survives all brokenness.
I write these words in the dust
on the shelf beside the box.
The museum curator doesn’t chastise me.
She smiles at what I wrote. She nods.

Read Full Post »

First Love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 28, 2021| 5 Comments »




Tonight, it comes back, how we’d go for walks
in the tall dry grass behind the old school.
In my memory, the field goes on and on and
it never rains and we have no idea how young
we are. Sun-drunk and heat-starved, twin ripples
of wind. Broken grass in our hair and howl
in our skin. And we believed in forever then—

perhaps we touched it those summer days,
a strand of forever, forgotten for decades,
lost amongst other eternal strands—but oh,
those hands, those parted lips, that tall, trembling grass.

Read Full Post »

I Never Knew

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

I ate my string beans cooked too long
in cream of mushroom soup
and I ate soggy tater tots
and neon green fruit loops.
I ate cranberry relish
served in the shape of a can,
but please, mama, pretty please, I’d say
don’t make me eat the Spam.

I’d eat dip made from cheese food
on chips from Frito Lay,
I’d eat red Jello salad
with layers of mayonnaise,
I’d eat the bits of Jiffy Pop
burned on the disposable pan,
but please, mama, pretty please, I’d say
don’t make me eat the Spam.

One day when I had left the home
I teased my mom about
the way she served us processed food
when we were growing up,
like cans of Spam and beans and peas
from dusty shelves at the store,
Oh honey, she said, I wanted fresh food.
It was all we could afford.

Read Full Post »