for Eric on our 31st Anniversary
then you said, “you should move to Telluride
after you get your degree,” and I said, “I was
thinking of going into the Peace Corps,”
and you said, “or you could move to Telluride,”
and I said, “I don’t know about living in a resort,”
and you said, “I live in a place so beautiful
everyone in the world comes to visit,” and I said,
“okay,” but what I meant was, “I’m scared, and
what if I put all my dreams in one basket with
your name on it and the basket unravels,”
and so I said, “I’ll find a place to rent,” and
you said, “it’s way to expensive, you should
move in with me,” and I said, “okay,” but what
I meant was “I’m scared because I love you
and what if you see who I really am and decide
you don’t love me anymore?” and now it’s been
thirty-one years since you said “I will,” and I said,
“I will,” and then came walking in starlight
to treeline and gathering snowmelt to drink
and long hikes in the desert and skiing through
spruce trees and losing who we thought we were
and growing sweet Cresthaven peaches
and sitting in shattered silence and
building raised beds for Finnish fingerlings
and holding each other through long nights of tears
and letting the rolls rise on the counter and
waking to discover we’ve become exactly who
we are together, two selves who could never
have guessed how they would be re-shaped by love,
and I wasn’t wrong to be scared all those years
ago, it is so big, what love asks of us, a shedding,
an utter unraveling and reweaving of self,
a struggling, a merging, an ongoing becoming,
come, stand at the edge of today with me, sweetheart,
I am who I am because you, because loving
you, because we, because you dare to do
this glorious, scary thing and love me, too.
Posts Tagged ‘love’
Ongoing Love Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged husband, long marriage, love, wife on October 20, 2026| 12 Comments »
This, Too
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, memory, nourishment, reframe, sunflower on October 9, 2026| 4 Comments »
I once thought love was always open, open the way a sunflower is open, bright and lavish and soft. Today the sunflowers are spent, brown, lifeless stalks, and the Stellar’s jays wrestle seeds from desiccated heads, seeds that nourish them in these shortening days. Sometimes I find in me old memories of you. When I rattle them, I discover inside are dried seeds of compassion, seeds of loss, seeds of devotion, seeds of trust. I take them in like the communion they are. Feel how what is hard and dried grows me. Feel how this, too, is love.
That Impossible Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, burning, fear, fire, love on October 8, 2026| 3 Comments »
You were curled into yourself,
a tight lump of a woman,
hiding in the corner of the closet.
How long did you scrunch there
in that small tight room beneath the coats,
that room dark as coal, while tongues
of fury and fear and indignation
swirled inside you like blue flames,
blue flames licking, licking and seeking
more fuel to burn. You burned.
What was it that allowed you
to unclench? Exhaustion, of course.
Exhaustion, and an almost imperceptible spark.
You would never call that spark love. But was it?
Was it love that came and found you and gave
you the will to crawl to the door
and push it open just an inch, another
inch. Was it love that helped you stand,
love that fashioned from the char of you a woman?
Was it love that survived the blue flame
and whispered, I, too, am fire?
In Which I Dream of Being with You and Your Late Husband
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blessing, death, dream, friendship, god, grief, knitting, love on October 3, 2026| 9 Comments »
for LB
In the dream, I hand him a skein
of evergreen yarn. He cups his palms
below it as if receiving communion,
then squeezes the fine wool,
testing its softness, its strength.
Finding it worthy, he nods at me
as I offer you the half-knitted hat,
the yarn still attached to the needles,
the other end of the yarn held in his palms.
He looks at you, so loving, so tender,
looks at the slender green strand between you
and smiles before unwinding the yarn
to give you more length, more length.
This morning, the dream still wrapped around me,
I imagine you not as Penelope, knitting
and unknitting to prolong your time. Instead,
I see you have made of the yarn a swing,
a pendulum tethered to devotion that allows you
to play and soar between realms, and the god
of swings and the god of skeins, and
the god of play and the god of love and the god
of green and the god of dreams are the same
good god, and every one of them is whispering
bless you, bless you, bless you.
What Did I Know, What Did I Know?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cleaning, devotion, family, grandmother, love on September 15, 2026| 3 Comments »
My father’s mother was not the kind of woman
who would hold your hand or gently
stroke your cheek, her fingers stained
by cigarettes, roughened from years
of cleaning the houses of others.
When she came to visit, I remember her
cleaning our windows with a solution
she made of vinegar and water, wiping
the glass with sheets of crumpled newspaper.
She scared me a little. I knew love as snuggling,
reading together and baking oatmeal cookies.
Our house’s walls were thin, but held up with song.
It’s taken me decades to understand how
a devotion that smells of vinegar is also strong.
For Every Secret Agent of Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, kindness, love, secret agents of change on September 10, 2026| 2 Comments »
Listen,
if this is it,
this smiling
at strangers,
this dreaming
with others
of new ways
to be kind
in a world that
relentlessly
reminds us
how cruel
the world can be,
if this is it,
this story
of a woman
who found a circle
of petals surrounding
her car,
if this is it,
then let the head
learn to trust what
the heart knows—
that love is a door
we can choose
to walk through
at any moment.
Here, take my hand.
Let’s move through
that door together.
In My First Pilates Class, I Reckon with Impossibility
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged impossible, love, pilates, possible on September 3, 2026| 5 Comments »
My arms were bent on a static platform
and my feet were strapped into a moveable carriage
and there were springs somewhere to make
the whole operation more difficult. As if.
And when the teacher suggested we lift our hips
into the air, well, there was simply no way this would happen.
Sometimes it’s like that for the heart, too,
when we are told we are supposed to love everyone,
then I think of a certain person, and I think,
nope, absolutely not, that is not happening.
But once I started to find my balance on the reformer,
truth is I did tuck one foot behind the other
and started to pike and flatten, pike and flatten,
the carriage slowly gliding forward and back,
and I thought, huh, well, how about that.
I was sweating too much, I think, for the heart
to pay attention, but my abs are intent on getting
the message across. Sure, it might hurt. Sure,
it’s not easy. But sometimes impossible is just
another way to say not possible yet.
Real Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anniversary, love, marriage on August 20, 2026| 13 Comments »
for Mom and Dad on their anniversary
Mostly I remember them holding hands.
Not swinging over rivers filled with crocodiles.
Not passionately kissing on the edge of a canyon.
Not jumping from planes, though they did scuba dive.
I remember them peeling and chopping
thirty pounds of carrots they bought bulk
so they can freeze them. I remember them
cleaning the boat. I remember them stopping
for rummage sale signs on Saturdays and sitting
in the back row of the church on Sundays
and sitting on the couch holding hands
on most days. And even so Dad isn’t here
today on their anniversary, he is here.
I remember how they shaped each other with their love
in an everyday way, year after year after year,
then offered that love to me, to the world.
The Possible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss of the separate self, love, spaciousness, surrender on July 20, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Starting here, I want to remember
the spaciousness that emerges in me
when my heart knows itself as an expression
of the one great heart. In those moments,
when the I slips away and the we is all,
when love is unbound from the walls
of my chest and expands across mountains
and deserts and oceans and returns
with the peaks and tide in each breath,
then the rightest parts of my being unclench
themselves, as if all the bars of the inner prison
dissolve and what’s left is freedom
to love beyond judgment, beyond should
and should not, beyond how my one small heart
is capable of loving. I remember the first time
I felt love carry me through a moment
I knew I could not meet alone. Since that time,
I am learning to trust that the heart of all hearts
can rise up in any moment to illumine the path
I do not yet see is possible. Since that time,
I am still surprised but not surprised when
the spaciousness opens me again
to loving what feels impossible to love.
Keep Going
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, grief, love, mother, night, Telluride on July 11, 2026| 3 Comments »
The sky is already past deep rose
verging on bruised plum by the time
we enter the cemetery gates
and walk up the hill to the grave
where the ashes of the boy I love are buried.
I’ve never been here so late.
Didn’t know the flag pole was lit
from below so it looks like a candle,
a tall slender flame, flaring up at the end
of a long, dark canyon. Didn’t know
how the night itself makes a quiet cocoon
for meeting the dead past the limits
of light, a shadow so generous it makes
equal room for sorrow and love to move in.
It’s not a voice, but it is, that says,
You can never lose me.
It’s not a touch, but it is, the invisible hand
that leads me back toward home.
Sending Love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, distance, love, mother, sky on June 12, 2026| 2 Comments »
for my daughter
When you were a girl
and you’d leave for camp,
I would talk to you
through the sky,
whispering through
blue and star-dappled
dark. The message
was always the same:
I love you. I hope you
are happy. I want to gather
you a jar full of sky
so wherever you are
you can put your ear
to it and hear those simple
words translated into starlight
and sunset, cumulous
and cirrus. Sometimes
it’s easier to trust what
we can hold in our hands.
But if you ever spilled
the contents of the jar,
the love would be no less
present. In fact, you could
hold the empty glass
to your chest and feel
how love is as uncontainable
as wind, as insistent as thunder,
as everywhere as air.
One Every Morning for Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, loving what is, nature, raven, worm on June 10, 2026| 4 Comments »
the sleek black raven
the feast of thick worms
the falling in love with them both
The Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, conversation, daughter, forgiveness, knitting, love, mother, naming on June 3, 2026| 4 Comments »
I was sitting beside my mother on the couch,
knitting a blanket for my girl. My mother held
the yarn in her lap, a cloud of muted pinks.
Outside, the tall dry grasses weaved
in golden evening light. A Western Warbling Vireo
rambled on in its jumbled, warbly way. Mom spoke
of her plans for dinner the next night
and I knit two, purled six, knit two, purled six.
She guided the soft wool through her fingers,
keeping just the right amount of slack. I felt
such a tide of love for her. Wanted to tell her
I’m sorry for every time I’ve been hardened,
every time I’ve pushed her away instead
of pulling her close. I wanted to whisper
the love beyond words, some sentence true
as the sweetness I felt today sitting beside her
in the sun in the grass while we waited
for a Belted Kingfisher or Northern Yellow Warbler
to fly across the pond. But to name a feeling is so
much harder than naming a bird. So when the row
was done, I rested my head on her shoulder, closed
my eyes and nuzzled in. There was only softness
in me then. I’d like to think she translated what
I meant. Just as I knew what she was saying to me
with each length of unspooling yarn: I know
how you love me. I know your heart. I love you, too,
my girl. By the time we rose, we were held
by the dark. Even the swallows were quiet.
While Transplanting Calendula
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fragility, garden, love, marriage on June 2, 2026| 2 Comments »
How gently I move the volunteer sprouts
out of the potato bed and into another row,
careful to gather the fragile roots with a bit
of damp dirt, tamping lightly around the slender stem.
How fragile it all can be. I think of how tenderly
this morning my husband touched my face,
as if too well aware of how a single moment
can change everything. We folded
into each other then like two petals
of a single flower. In the garden,
I stare at the spindly transplants,
a new row of tiny, rounded green leaves.
A delicate ache rises in me, charged with
love for the spare beauty of what is here
and an awareness of how the simplest scrape
can make a whole world disappear.
How the Communication Works Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, grief, invisible, loss, love on May 29, 2026| 4 Comments »
Tonight I can’t see the shape of the moon
behind a cluster of clouds, but I see
the bright radiance seeping through the edges
and know the moon is there—
that is how it is when I speak out loud
to my father and son. Hi Dad, I say.
Hi Finn. I love you. I miss you.
And aren’t you so proud of our girl?
As I walk through the dark, scent of rain
in each breath, I can’t hear the shape
of their words in my ears. But I swear,
I feel it, the shine.
The Moment I Hope to Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, exhaustion, graduation, love, mother, ordinary moment on May 28, 2026| 2 Comments »
sitting on the couch,
our bodies lean into each other—
two aspen trees, shared roots
The Day Before Graduation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, framing, graduation, love, parent, story, writing on May 27, 2026| 4 Comments »
for Vivian
Already she knows terrible things happen.
Already she knows the pleasure of scrambling
in the woods at night with friends and singing
too loud and making bad choices that are sometimes
exactly the right choices. She knows sobs and
silliness. She knows how much humans can hurt
each other. She knows how a touch or a tender
word erases nothing but creates its own plot of trust.
There was a time when my job was to protect her,
filling her pages with beauty and courage and honesty.
Now my job is mostly to love her, to give her her own pen.
Because terrible things happen. And she is the one now
who shapes her story. Every writer knows, we write
what we know—and what we can’t ever know.
I pray what emerges is the impossible—an irrational,
deep rooted love for this difficult, glorious world.
Two Thousand Three Hundred Forty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, food, graduation, letting go, love, lunch, mother, school on May 22, 2026| 4 Comments »
That’s how many school lunches
I’ve made her, more or less, since
that first day she held my hand and we
stood on the grass outside the elementary school
before the first bell rang. Her hair was blonde then,
mine not gray. I’m not crying as I make her
lunch this morning. Dilled bean and rice salad.
Fresh blackberries. Pretzel sticks.
Honeycrisp apples sliced into thin rounds
that her friends call “floppy apples.”
Maybe I’m crying.
Me and all the other mothers on the last
day of the last year of school. Thinking of
two thousand three hundred forty bleary mornings
when I woke to pour love into plastic containers
along with dried mango and tofu cubes,
seaweed strips and yogurt tubes.
Okay. So I’m crying. I nibble the squared off core
of the apple to gather every last bit of sweetness.
When it’s gone, I lick the stickiness from my fingers.
The Night I Remembered What Love Can Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, breathing, heart, heart energy, love, panic attack, unwanted on May 19, 2026| 12 Comments »
What is unwanted still serves.
—Sam Aureli, “Dandelions”
I was just sitting on the edge of the porch,
but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe,
I was sobbing and scared and hurting and
I couldn’t fucking breathe; panic surged in me,
my brain screamed red, and I tried to breathe—
why couldn’t I breathe?—as my chest squeezed
and sobs quaked and shook and stole me,
and I couldn’t feel my heart. Wait. I couldn’t feel
my heart? A star-bright awareness sang in me then
like a one-note song I could follow home through
any darkness or density. Not that the terror disappeared,
but in attuning myself to my heart, my physical heart
opened enough to hold the terror. I sat on the edge
of the porch. Just sat. And was breathed.
Watching My Daughter Before Her Prom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, impossible, love, mother, prom on May 3, 2026| 3 Comments »
More flowing than walking
she moves down the street,
her green dress billowing,
her shoulders bare.
Sometimes the world
asks us to do impossible math—
for instance to add more love
when already we are filled to capacity
with love. And again tonight, I meet it,
the impossible.