I waited for you sixteen years, spurned the quiet, easy lover to crouch low from gunshots in the park at night, scratching at the grime for what I knew was there but seldom found. And you, aware my heart was always one step back, tensed away from me. Today, the bodega on the corner is... Continue Reading →

During the last Christmas, the girl, now woman, slept in her childhood bed. Outside,wind sculpted drifts into a frozen white sea, the crests rising and toppling. Far underneathwere small animals, hibernating in a quiet world.In her own sleep, someone she knew was decorating the bed with small, brilliant lights,the brightest stars in our galaxy. She... Continue Reading →

Ours was a collision of dreamsMe and my roundabout boy.I used to ask him,Is your universe beneath the waterOr above the clouds orOnly in your mind?Who cared anyway?He was my rainbow man.His smell rubbed into my blood.He was walking backwards when we metAnd I asked him,Whose baby are you? andWon't you be mine?He said, I... Continue Reading →

for Anne Sexton How to kill yourself this time You kept wondering in your Thorazine hazeNow after fifty years my once professoressaI am still afraid to write this You were my sad mother too Same age as MomWhile you were remaking Grimm Mom toured China’s bright new communisms But I did want to put my... Continue Reading →

Imagine the graphable shifts in your own self-civilization from proud, young hunter to calculating gatherer to steady cultivator: industrious over worker of your fragile inner child. And notice those thin but alarming layers in your sedimentary record, the relative moments indicating odd breakthroughs, beneficial mutations, weathered disasters— in my case, that sudden thaw of marital... Continue Reading →

shallow breathing filling a silence new to me to be drowned out by the heater kicking on when the house hits 61 degrees just how he likes it past days this breathing soothed me to sleep now holds me awake awaiting the last drawn breath I thought I heard 5 hours ago mistaken; relieved relieved... Continue Reading →

Something is wrong with the lights near the field. They flicker and burn like they’re groping for air. Their tumblers turn but the darkness won’t yield. We had to awake to dawn’s holy glare. It flowed from the hills like a river of stars. We braced for the chills so sharp in the air. I’m... Continue Reading →

The book belonged to my cousin. A relic of her childhood it was thick and heavy. Greek legends, she told me, myths and fantasies, gods and goddesses, not quite fairy stories and not many pictures, not enough to interest me, the eight year old me, so we both thought. But then it fell open and... Continue Reading →

I long to return to Bali, to the quiet that slipsthrough rice fields, mixes with offerings cupped in banana leaves, traced on templescool with moss and devotion, hovering in the scent of buried springs—whatever gaps in my soul are filled, at least for the time I standwith my forehead pressed against stones. It doesn’t matter... Continue Reading →