A spider crosses my path,
its steps careful, calculated.
It pauses in my shadow,
uncertain whether to move forward or back.
We share this moment, the spider and I,
both caught in the web we did not choose,
each bound by the rules of our nature.

I do not crush it,
knowing there is no triumph in such an act.
But I understand, too,
that this same spider would show no kindness
to a fly ensnared in its silk.
And that is okay.
We all follow the scripts we are given,
finding our place in a world
that is neither cruel nor kind,
just indifferent.

We part ways, the spider and I,
it continuing its silent journey,
and I, mine.
In this fleeting intersection of our lives,
there is no victory or defeat,
only existence and its quiet persistence.

And as I watch it disappear into the grass,
the day carries on,
but the spider lingers in my thoughts,
a tiny presence that feels larger than it should.
It reminds me of the countless lives
we pass by each day, unnoticed,
each with their own silent battles,
each following the threads of fate
that weave us all into this tapestry.

I think about the webs we spin,
invisible to the eyes of others,
and how often we find ourselves
trapped in the strands of our own making.
How many times have I, too,
hesitated in someone’s shadow,
uncertain of the path ahead,
wondering if I should move forward
or retreat into the safety of the familiar?

And yet, like the spider,
we press on, driven by something
deeper than thought,
some primal urge to survive,
to persist despite the odds.
There is a strange beauty in this,
a quiet resilience that speaks
to the core of what it means to be alive.

Perhaps, in the end,
it is enough to simply exist,
to find our place in the world
not through grand gestures or triumphs,
but through the small mercies we offer,
even to those who cannot fathom them.
If I can shape the world,
if only for a moment,
into something resembling kindness,
then perhaps the indifference
is not as vast as it seems.

I can tell
from the smile draped across
your cheekbones
and your boisterous thought
pinned like a malicious lapel
three odd words—
“bursting with life.”

Painting the corpse on display,
crammed inside a casket,
dressed in birthday suit.

Am I aching?
Am I in distress?
Do you need words
to tell you of these things?
While you hold a living funeral
for such feelings.

In between us,
a wall,
Before: you said you wanted connection, as you laid one brick after another.
Maybe if you went over you’d see
the emptiness you banished me to.

You,
cold as an ethereal summer,
sifting through gaps of a cracked heart
after being battered by promises offered.

Well excuse me,
if I can't get over the hurt
You do not have to be grateful.
You do not have to see beyond yourself.
You can continue, as you have,
to orbit your own sun.

No, I refuse you
patting tears I cannot cry.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile, my heart, once offered
like an open palm full of seeds,
learns to close, to protect itself from
your drought and wildfire.
You are not the IRS,
neither an accountant,
nor a broker, but a breaker you are
love is not a transaction,
not a ledger to be balanced.

I should have flown with my flock
against the gale of your indifference,
but such curse is youth,
when naiveté is in abundance.

Perhaps the wilderness out there has something safer to offer,
something tamed,
and,
somewhere, the dogwood blossoms
like heaps of uncaring December, covering the ground
in a blanket of white petals.
I want to lie down there,
to press my ear to the earth
and listen to the roots growing,
to the slow, steady drumbeat
of my thumping heart or whatever
is left of it.

I don't need your approval to bloom
so watch me unfurl next season,
my leaves reaching for a kinder light,
my roots deepening into richer soil.

I wish my silence were words for you to read.

In the quiet of night, I wrestle with fate,  
The heart’s heavy burden, the crushing weight.  
Does love wear a price tag, a gilded façade,  
Or linger in shadows, where truth is defraud?  

I see him, the one who stirs not my soul,  
Yet offers a life where ambition takes toll.  
Could I turn my back on the warmth that I crave,  
And barter my heart for the riches he gave?  

What if all men wear masks, their hearts locked away?  
What if true love is just a game they all play?  
Why should I cling to a hope that might shatter,  
When gold glints so brightly, and love seems a scatter?  

Am I less if I choose, a puppet of gold?  
A villainous figure, a story retold?  
Yet in whispers of night, when I’m lost in my dreams,  
What if peace lies in silence, in the still of my screams?  

Can a woman be free, can she rise and defy?  
Can she shatter the chains, spread her wings, and learn to fly?  
To seek not just comfort but solace within,  
To love fiercely, wildly, and still learn to sin.  

I long for a choice that ignites the deep fire,  
Not just a cold bargain, a life to conspire.  
In the dance of the heart, let the echoes be heard,  
For a woman can choose, can love without words.  

So let them all label, let the world play its part,  
For I’ll walk my own path, with a fierce, unbound heart.  
I’ll weave through the pain, let my passions ignite,  
For in darkness, I’ll shine, a relentless, brave light.  

In the depths of desire, I’ll carve out my throne,  
Not just for the riches, but the strength I’ve outgrown.  
I’ll gather my fragments, each piece tells my story,  
A mosaic of scars, of struggle, of glory.  

For life is a canvas, and I’m the bold brush,  
I’ll paint my own destiny in a vibrant rush.  
No longer a pawn in a game meant to bind,  
I’ll chase what fulfills me, leave the empty behind.  

So watch me rise higher as I follow my heart,  
Embracing the journey, each moment a start.  
For in every decision, in the choices I make,  
A woman finds freedom and a world she can shape.

a man leans as i leave
the office building—against it,
dark and young,
his face has emptied
of expression, and innocence
has fallen away like drying sand from a stone in the sun,
i do not look at him,
in passing,
out of respect, i tell myself,
but know: out of fear
of connection i do not speak to him.
next morning, he is not
there is only a mound of sand,
which, in my name,
the city workers and the wind sweep and carry away.

I've such a secret
to share
with you,
yet all I can do
is whisper.

In such a cacophonous world,
my whispers are
no longer melodies,
but the tapping of
ant feet in a field of green,
under the twisted steel
of man-made birds.

I've such a secret,
but no one
to listen
to me
whisper it.

Our trajectory is unknowable, you tell me: the planet
corkscrews around the Sun, sure,

but the Sun corkscrews around a black hole at
the heart of the Milky Way,

and our whole galaxy travels on some mysterious,
incalculable vector. But sister, I saw a photograph

in which two whale sharks were brought to
heel by men in simple reed boats just

off the coast of the Philippines. All that they had
to do was often feed

the sharks many gallons of grocery-store frozen
shrimp, poured from plastic garbage bags into

their yawning six-foot maws to portside.
Gargantuan, sure, but still

as obedient and eager for food as backyard
squirrels. I remembered a grainy

internet video—I saw it probably seven or
eight years back—in which

a captured whale shark was winched
ashore in Madagascar, or

maybe it was the Philippines again—no matter—
the thing still had life left

in it and struggled to breathe while a crowd of
people gathered around—there were

women carrying babies, girls holding baskets atop
their heads—and then the

men came with a long slender blade and sliced clean
through the whale’s spine, vivisected it

right there on the dock, and the onlookers stood there quite
unfazed—I remember

being shocked at the effortlessness of the cut,
the pinkness of the whale’s blood,

and the boredom in the onlookers’ eyes. Our father
took us down to San Antonio

on one of his business trips there when we were five
or six—I think

you were probably too young to
remember it—

it was when you and I saw the ocean for the first
time. We drove down to the Gulf

of Mexico, and we saw waves breaking
out near the horizon in pale

sunlight. I kept scanning for a dorsal
fin off beyond

the breakers, thinking that I might spot one—
sandy brown, mottled with

cream spots and glistening—so that I might be able to
say to you, pointing, “look,

sister, there is a whale shark!” Years
later we would learn

that he traveled down to San Antonio so
frequently because he was a philanderer. As

a child I believed that whale sharks
crisscrossed the ocean following

paths that we couldn’t fathom, that
their concerns were somehow

beyond our comprehension, but then
Keppler pinned down

the shape of the Earth’s orbit over four
hundred years ago,

and the lives of ancient sea
titans are sundered

effortlessly
by men with indifferent faces.