Come here.  Look,
The grass is fading, and soon
The snowbirds will arrive.
Unmoved, they'll watch from afar
And, O, so shall I,
- trembling,
For fear that they may fly.

On water I walk
The deck. Steady, the boat floats
Across glassy seas.

cognition
conversation
wonder
brilliant shine
glitteringly white
transfigured
transfixed
conversion
startling light
resurrection

I tried to love someone else
But you were the love of my youth
Your love carried me into adulthood

You gave me your pain to carry
Late night on my blue princess phone
The darkness of your life and war poured out

I gathered it and tried to close the wound
Soothing you when you came to lie beside me
You had had enough of killing, enough warring

I wanted to give you beauty and love
Love enough to bury the skeletons
And to carry your seeds forward into life

(From an interview with a young woman who escaped from ISIS)
She is dead and wonders why
Her heart goes on beating.
But, she has been dead before.

She died each time she thought
About the eight year old girl *****
Then taken, a wife for ISIS.

"Take me!" she had pleaded.
Her body would be stronger.
Her mind already knew . . .

So, now, at only twenty,
She dies, again and again.
Yet, her heart and memory will not.

"Lovely" The word slips between my lips
As a sigh.

The day is hot,
The water cool.

We are young
And reasonably beautiful;

Something, which no one can take away
From us, except for time.

Let me be a river
To flow away from you

Let me be a cloud in the sky
And float away in the blue

Let me be a mouth
To open and scream

Let me be a Northern
Raging to the south

Let me be a night
Filled with sweet dreams

Let me be beauty
Where ugliness was

Let me be love