The only
Time I learned
Of your sadness
I read it like
Braille
On your body
It was
Knitted in
Your muscles
Carved into
Your face
Woven into
Your hands
And it made me
Sad to think
That our
Unseen horrors
Like
Silence
And loss
Are such palpable
Afflictions
Our bodies
Bear

–learning how to heal myself, Sarah Gray Isenberg

July 2016

The night he told me
He was 25
And had to get married
To someone other
Than me
We were sitting
In a Home Depot
Parking lot
At 9 pm
And the street lamps
Burned
Above us
In their
Usual neon haze
And the moon
Silhouetted
Our faces on
The car windows
And the breeze
Turned leaves
Over and over
In its soft palms
And I thought
How cruel
Of the world
To continue
On so ceaselessly
As my love
Dissolved
Into memory

–pondering the dissolution of my interracial love, Sarah Gray Isenberg

June 2016

I think this is my list so far:
Kate Chopin
Jack Kerouac
W.E.B. Dubois
Harriet Martineau
Sue Monk Kidd
Nancy Isenberg
John Steinbeck
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ernest Hemingway