As many chairs
as humans.
No way to refuse
what we are served.
We choke on
the courses.
How is it they
nourish us?
Beneath the table,
we hold hands.
Posts Tagged ‘grief’
At the Table of Loss
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, grief, loss on May 13, 2026| 2 Comments »
What the Heart Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, car, control, grief, safety on May 11, 2026| 10 Comments »
In every moment, there is a car
and an infinite hill and the chance
you will roll down that hill. With no brakes.
Backwards. When grief first yanked me
into its old beater, I was too stunned
to try to stop gravity from doing what
gravity does. Mostly, these days,
I forget what can happen. Mostly,
there’s a rope attached to the car
that keeps it from careening, a rope
made of friendship, of family,
of trust in the self that has grown over time.
The rope is a lovely illusion.
Sometimes I fool myself into believing
that the stability I feel is because
the brakes are fixed and I’ve become
better at parking, even in the steepest zones.
I fool myself into thinking the rope can’t be cut.
That is why, perhaps, it’s so surprising
when I feel the lurch, my stomach rising
into my chest. So surprising to see loss
is sitting in the driver’s seat looking
at me with its uncompromising gaze
as if to say, No, sweetheart,
that seatbelt won’t do you any good.
If you pray, now’s a good time for that—
but don’t bother to pray for the car
to stop. Pray to be able to laugh
as we speed down the hill.
Pray that as the world blurs by,
while terror squeezes your throat
what is most alive in you also notices
how radiant the sunset, how briefly
it shines, that tender pink.
A Small Lesson in Infinity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, mother, mother's day on May 10, 2026| 10 Comments »
after “Flower in a Field” by Dario Cvencek
A mother is still a mother
even in an empty house,
even when there’s not a child
hanging on her hip or leg,
she’s still a mother even when
the floors are clean, devoid
of Legos and Monopoly houses.
Even when silence
fills the spaces where once
rang laughter, crying, singing,
even when the cake stays exactly
where she left it in the fridge,
when her car doesn’t leave the drive
for days because no one needs
to be taken to school or to dance.
Even then, she’s a mother,
when the phone doesn’t ring,
when her child can no longer
walk in the room, can’t say hello,
can’t even breathe, even then,
even then when there is no damn way
she can care for her child, that sad
fact does not change the fact
that she’s a mother, just as a tree
in the field is no less tree when the saplings
that came from its seeds are cut down,
just as a happy memory might still
make you happy even if it arrives
amongst tears. She is no less a mother
when the only thing that fills her arms
is tenderness for other mothers with
empty arms, when instead of holding
anyone, she lets herself be held.
Still
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, stuffed animal, toy on May 6, 2026| 4 Comments »
Over four years after his death,
I still sleep with Skinny Puppy, the lovey
my boy treasured and slept with each night,
even into high school. Flat with no stuffing,
a soft square body with a small round head.
Every night in the dark, I tuck its worn,
brown fabric beneath my left arm,
let it nestle up against my heart.
Every morning, it’s still there.
I make it into the bed. I feel no shame
in wanting its slight weight against me.
Such simple comfort.
Not that I need an object for him to be with me.
I carry him inside. Close as breath.
But four years after his death, I like
the reminder he was here. I like
to remember how he loved soft things.
How he was capable of such tenderness
in the ways he held the world,
this world that could not manage to hold him.
At the Center of the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apple, garden, grief, growth, orchard, tree, wound on May 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
When no one
is looking
she touches
the wound
that hides
beneath
her smile
where the scion
of acceptance
was grafted
to her rootstock
of stubbornness.
Most people
don’t notice
the scar,
focused as they are
on the fruit,
but she
remembers
the cut,
the tissue exposed.
How tenderly
she traces
that place
where the union
was formed.
Since the wounding,
her fruits
have become
vibrant, complex,
so sharp, even tart,
and so sweet.
After the Chickadee Hits the Window
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boy, caring, chickadee, feeling, grief, love, pie on March 14, 2026| 6 Comments »
for Thilo
To the unmoving body
of the tiny bird in the grass
below the kitchen window,
the young boy brings a plate
of white safflower seeds.
Hours later, when the bird
has not moved, one wing still askew,
the boy weeps. His father and I
sing a death song as we carry
the almost weightless body
in a brief procession across the yard.
The boy and his mother walk
behind. Her fingers lightly rest
where his own wings would be.
There is a tenderness inside us
that knows every life is precious
and refuses to pretend otherwise.
Later, the boy carves a chickadee
into the top crust of an apple pie,
making of grief something beautiful.
I want to protect that part of him—
the part that feels, that respects,
that honors. I want to awaken
that part in us all—the part
that dares to care deeply,
the part that knows every
life matters.
Orbit
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gravity, grief, holding, orbit on March 4, 2026| 6 Comments »
I thought I was holding grief.
Tonight I see grief is holding me.
Not with a vice grip. Not with a fist.
More the way gravity
holds the earth to the sun—
a force without which our planet
would lose all warmth, all life.
Love has many names. Grief is one,
and I am grateful tonight for the way
it tethers me not only to pain but
to beauty, goodness, connection.
Tonight I see grief not as a problem
to be solved but as an energy to explore,
to move with, to circle what is beloved.
There is some comfort even in knowing
it will never let me go. It is right that it
should hold me, even as I turn and turn.
Tender Astronomy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, Jack Ridl, kyra, star on February 20, 2026| 4 Comments »
with thanks to Jack Ridl
The day after she died,
Jack wrote to me.
Pick one star each night.
Name it Kyra.
Stare briefly toward it.
Say good, very good night.
His words became
a constellation,
a way to navigate the dark.
Sometimes, like now,
when I can’t see the stars,
I find one inside me.
Name it Kyra.
I say good, very good night.
Then I thank Jack.
For that moment,
everything is star.
After I Fell in the Canyon of Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, canyon, falling, grace, grief, surrender on January 7, 2026| 9 Comments »
we discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation
—Mark Nepo, “The Life After Tears”
I didn’t land. I fell and I fell and I fell.
At first as I plummeted, I feared the landing,
imagining an imminent crash. Then,
I fell through nights and middays. Fell through
kitchen floors and highways. Fell through
birthdays and Saturdays. Fell until the sense
of groundlessness was so familiar it no longer
felt like peril. I don’t know when I stopped falling.
There was no splat. No splash. No crushing of bones.
No sense of arrival. In fact, I am not certain
I am done with my falling. But I do know now
the falling is not something to be feared.
Not that we grow wings. This is not about flying.
It’s about falling. About meeting the gravity
and feeling its force and letting it carry me
in ways I have never before let myself be carried.
Now I know that the canyon of grief is
just another name for living the fullest life.
The reward for the falling is to no longer
expect a reward. The reward of falling is to
learn to not resist the falling. The reward of falling
is to feel how grace falls with us as if holding
our hand, like a teacher, like a friend.