We find life’s teachers in unlikely places — Yesterday I was bullied at the public pool. Well, let me rephrase that: Yesterday my wounded inner child was triggered at the public pool. In the Splash Zone While hanging out at the pool in the late afternoon, helping my 6-year-old daughter feel comfortable jumping into the 5-foot “deep end” with her donut-floatie, I…

a verse of serendipity — I write the words on the wing of a butterfly flapping rings around the world, speak them through sliding doors I always miss as the train zips, rushed away, they exit two stops down, tucked into a purse pocket, plucked out weeks later with a tissue and tumble down, sidewalk bound, to be tripped over, kicked like a curb…

A poem of disbelief — This year he found out. I tried to keep the lid shut on the box of his childhood, but his limbs kept growing, and he no longer fits inside. I want the world to be a place of magic, of safety — a place where sugar plums dance and joy appears with a…

A poem of circadian possibilty — the day is full of miracles but I don’t know it yet morning hasn’t been decided not by me — nor the sun bitterness towards this gift of life leaves a sour taste resentful that I have to wake dawn after dawn after dawn — a penance punishment for getting…

A poem of contingency — Ever since I was little, I always figured a tornado would take me — Kansas born, named after the vast, lurching horizon that always threatened to overturn gravity if you looked up too long. Always sky-gazing — looking up, counting clouds, watching the wind. I trust the earth, but my namesake —…

A poem of derivation — the universe follows rules numbers — patterns — equations who are we to think our soft and changing minds exempt and yet how does emotion fit into an algorithm can you write the differential equation for love over hate divided into infinitesimal bits or the integral for reassembling a heart sliced into…

A poem of impact — and I am caressing your cheek with my poetry words outstretched a fist bump from my diaphragm we gather and our voices rub shoulders in a huddle each poem reaches to the center light as a feather stiff as a board they lift us up weightless trusting a concentric collective …

Why we need negative emotions — 🤬 Anger, guilt, sadness, shame. 😨 Resentment, awkwardness, irritation, annoyance. No one likes these feelings. These are the emotions that rub us the wrong way, itch at our minds and cause our blood pressure to rise. For many years, I had a nightly drinking habit. Sometimes it was a little…

A poem of dimension — I listened to a podcast that told me there are millions of tiny black holes careening through space, colliding with Earth every day and passing right through our bodies — slipping by unnoticed in the vast emptiness inside us, through spaces between atoms. How strange, I thought. Have you ever…