On this day celebrating
or reproaching love, I can only
recall each year you were still here,
clutching a fragrant bouquet for mom

never mind the allergies that flared
even as she, beaming, placed each
one in the dark green sturdy vase
certain to hold the life within

Now she sits in the gloom
of a room that is too cold, empty
nester forced to befriend the shadows
and suppress the urge to burrow

into small cracks, senses heightened
with the absence of those fragrant
bouquets that never failed to remind her of the fullness of home, of you

I did not leave the desert unchanged.
The heat shimmered as if reminding me that all I had beheld was a mirage, tempting as it was to grasp it tightly
in my palm.

The rumble of the charge still echoed
in my mind, my spirit fully awakened, body upright now. So many decades
of being bent and not realizing it.
My vision shifted

to the impossible becoming my reality.
The warrior women who spoke life over me, poised and unwavering
as those with wisdom often are.
Their eyes peered deeply into mine

and the dry bones were made flesh anew. Somewhere in the distance,
the little girl I once was (who had fought so fiercely to procure
my safety) waved at me

one final time. Thank you, dear
little one, for being there when I felt like I had nothing else left. You no longer have to spring to my rescue.
I can handle my battles now,

knowing that the ultimate victory
is mine through Him who strengthens me. As I left the desert, I didn't look back. I was free. And so was she. Somehow, it was enough.

stumbling into the main hall
in my stained hospital gown,
my feet covered by those socks
with the grips, my ******* swollen

beyond measure, rock hard for lack
of expression. Eyes that saw me
but didn't question me. My growing
panic when I missed turning in

yet another food option card. Three
missed meals when my body needed
the nourishment more than ever.

The pills they prescribed to placate.
The kindly old man, his lip tremors
and teeth stained yellow, who freely
extended his friendship, who called me comrade. My exhaustion,

my deprivation of sleep and food. Of my right mind. The way I laid my head on the lunch table, asking my new friend if he could watch over me

as I slept, nightmares and demons
finally staved for some indeterminate
amount of time. How everyone there
let me call my mom over and over again, on the precious shared

hall phone. The way I was starved, thinking I would die there. The little card I drew, artwork at its finest, not knowing what reality was anymore.

How I recalled my own father being in a similar mental institution after his own suicide attempt. How he was saved. How I was.

The morning after
we told my mother
she would become
a first-time grandmother,

she sat alone in the garden
relaxing in the early morning sun,
craned her neck up at the huge tree
and spied a feisty pair of magpies

flitting about in a figure 8 — they squawked
out their monastic chants with abandon,
guarded their muddied little nest
tucked away in the groove

of a high branch. She froze,
eyes wide in a bewildered trance
as she suddenly recalled her own
mother so long ago, behind her

braiding my mother's thick hair,
her gentle voice murmuring about
the songs of magpies symbolizing
good news when you need it the most

My mother's smile was tremulous as she sat
in her garden, shrouded by the sweet incense
of memory, palms pressed together to ponder
all the ways we press on towards the light

magnolia’s cream-mottled cheek
   marking yet another bygone era
   plunked into the abyss as sorrow
   burrows into us, roots that become

our prisons / our refuge, the delirious
journey into what we've come
     to recognize as our shadow selves'
   last fragments of a fallen season

that last slanted sunset reflected off the lake
hinting with its brilliance at what we simply
could not admit to ourselves. The expanding
distance between us we hide in and seek thereafter

I read of your passing and paused mid-bite.
The world seemed to grow colder, but you knew
it was time to begin your next adventure, one
far beyond this familiar world we had shared.

Scientist — no, pioneering champion —  
in the fight against cancer and diabetes,
you were humble even in your brilliance.
A giant among men, a heart greater still.

I can only think of each time you passed
me in the hallway, your shy smile luminous
even as you ducked past me as if afraid
I might start speaking about what we had both

lost so long ago. You had always been my late dad’s
favorite boss, and I remember the thoughtful albeit brief
email you sent me when the cancer took him, expressing
your sorrow that a great scientist and fellow man had left

this cruel world far too soon. Now you join him
and I picture the two of you, both clad in white lab coats
colliding in an awkward embrace, eager to update one another
on all that the other had missed from the other side.

Growing weary on the road,
respite seemingly out of grasp, wild
eyes cast their silver-yellow sullen

warning to the ground below as we crane
our twisted necks up: a meager offering
to the ones who walked the path before

Horned owl, languid head turning, collects
our astonished gasps like cold gleaming
rubies once tossed into a ravine or river —

nearby, the fog rolls in: curious bystander
ever intent on pulling the heavy curtain aside
to devour the last tasty morsels in the thrill

of a bygone moment — reckless and ripe
with the bloodstains of youth, the hunger
departing and returning in an instant

Her very first one, sitting in her high chair,
mouth stained with strawberry juice —
with such ease and joy, it caught me

by surprise. Good job, she says again,
smiling, her little thumb peeking out from that
tight little fist. All I had done was declare

the color of my shirt — red. She turns
to finish eating, already distracted by the animated
music video on the screen. Just the two of us

having breakfast, I savor this simple moment.
When had I learned to withhold praise?
To refuse to acknowledge others

for tackling another day, knowing
that it took everything in them just to let
themselves see & be seen // hold & be held?

You once spoke about the heart of a child –
how we all must become like children to see,
to hear, to truly receive. Help me remember.

by images of a home
he once knew, destroyed —
the deconstructed fox hole
now a pile of sticks and stones
patiently waiting for the howl
of a broken man so desperate
to revive or rebuild something
not as revolting as it once was.

Somewhere in the distance,
an owl or mourning dove practices
cutting the space with its melancholy
melody, the refrain at once familiar
and strange, echoing a time
between time, nestled
in the crook of calamity.

I calmly take it all in, content
to watch the slow unraveling
of a life that isn't mine, one
or two worlds apart yet close
enough for me to realize

how it, too, yearns for another realm,
for a chance to burn their dead,
to be revived by the only song
desperate enough to crawl
back to the very place
that had once destroyed it.

I come from the cracked sidewalks of Chi-town, stoops
where we sat baking in blistering sun, listening
for the bells of the bicycles, so bold & eager for change
we could plop on the counter of the corner store.

In the constant drone of the deli, Italian grandpas
convened in their drab plaid, pressed khakis — coursing
the quiet confidence that comes from living that life
in the fast lane, simmering to a peace that permeates
each measured step. The bowls of minestrone soup
to warm their old bones: dead dreams reigniting.

I come from the family that never had anything
to own — but still didn’t allow me to go hungry.
I come from a steaming plate of sizzling
homemade dumplings, each juicy morsel
containing a mother’s fierce love for family.

I come from a long line of trauma responses
and the healing that only comes from truly creating.
I come from a great-grandmother, a grandmother,
a mother that poured out even when the jagged pieces
cut up our throats coming up. I come from having

lost my entire mind, frenzied forces pushing
my body up against a cold psych wall, no escape
in sight for me. I come from the guilt I'd held
for far too long, for missing the entire first
month of my daughter's life on this earth
when I couldn't even take care of myself.

Somewhere in the midst of coming to the end
of myself, I found You. You had never left.
I came home, battered and so broken, and You
enveloped me in Your healing Light. Selah.  



I’m walking in restoration, deep restoration,
a coursing river engorged with living water.
I finally allow myself to be fully immersed
in the wellspring that never runs dry. And there, fully
surrendered in the depths, I find that I can finally breathe.