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  Wild We are made of dreams and matter. We form to the music of our mother’s heartbeat, Surrounded by whispers of the secrets of the Universe, A physical body slowly stitched to our soul. We arrive, made of flesh and water, Met by Life with lungsful of air, Cut from our Source and still connected. We look into the eyes around us- Why wouldn’t we? It’s what we’ve come for. We look into their souls and hearts. They recognize us and they weep. We have launched from Everything to Here. We are vast, Full of passion. Curious. We move and we strive to share what we know, All that we brought with us. We see magic. We stop to feel, to honor our Holy, To experience awe, To catch raindrops, To feel the texture of both sides of a leaf, To listen to moving water, To appreciate the dancing wind on our cheeks, In our hair, To gaze on the shape of a cloud without ever making it understandable Here. Our savoring of All That Is is a bu...
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The Chosen Sisters

 The Chosen Sisters The chosen sisters share their hearts, Their words, Their stories.   They’re hard stories, Of loss And pain , Of o ld wounds, festering, pulled open, To face light.   They hurt, the sighs of grief, of shame and age-old trauma, Nearly accepted as the norm, Ever nagging. This could not be right. This is not okay.   And we the sisters share the story, Action is inevitable. We must DO something with it.   Sometimes, we sit by water, listening to it lapping at the shore, Holding the story or letting it be. We place it on the current and watch it drift away. We witness.   Or we put it under bright lights And we realize that what has been so awful, In the dark of our nights, Might just be funny. No, hilarious! It’s power is gone, escaped into the night.   We might just set it ablaze And chuck it, burning, off a cliff And we howl, “You don’t own me Anymore...
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Narcan

I keep on thinking that I’m okay, that I’ve got this. I’m way out ahead of my losses. They’re managed. I’ve grieved for long enough that it’s simply how I live. I think I’m fine. Maybe not fine, just accustomed to the normalcy of grief, of living without them.  I am used to the absences. I maintain relationships, connections with my dead. Normally, Grief just walks along with me and we exist in that comfortable silence you share with your oldest friend and closest love. We are always together, familiars. Scrolling through social media I discover that it’s Daughter’s Day and seeing photos of mothers with their daughters doesn’t break me. I don’t even feel sad, just worried for the newly bereaved mothers experiencing the pangs anew with every smiling picture, square after square of evidence that others have what they do not. I turn it off and get a text from a friend who noticed the day, thought it might bother me. She sends me a message. My lack of a daughter, my writing and spe...
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Bulletproof Backpacks

  “Did you buy the boys bulletproof backpacks?” It’s 10:00 the night before school starts and my aunt has clearly forgotten about the house-wide chaos on theses nights, the agonizing over whether they know where to go, who’s in their classes, if we have purchased the right snacks. I used to make a big deal of the last day of summer. There were shopping trips and s’mores and we were always the last ones out of the pool. My mom insists that I gift them a little chocolate every First Day of School morning, “for a sweet school year.” They don’t hear her sentimentality over the joy of Peanut M&M’s. Even during the pandemic, their desks had jars of Peanut M&M’s on them that first, weird, morning. This year, I have COVID, so all the fun crap was replaced by my sixteen-year-old taking the fifteen- and twelve-year-old brothers to Food Lion for some junk food I would NEVER purchase. That seemed to make them at least as happy as being the last ones out of the pool. And my husb...
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Montifiore

  I stub my toe on a stone and curse. “AT REST,” it says, coolly. “Aunt Sid, where are you?” I feel her response, her voice, her sensibility more than I hear it. I’m certainly not here, Tootsie. “But,” I say, out loud, not at all concerned about being judged by the 150,000 dead planted here. “But, I have rocks for you. Rocks from Utah and Massachusetts and from the creek behind my house in Virginia.” I wave the rocks over my head, a fist full of orange and gray and shimmering white, held tight to keep the tiniest pebbles from escaping. These rocks have been clanging around in my car for years, clicking in the armrest when I take a turn, avoiding the vacuum when I infrequently clean. When I see a stone and I think of her, when I’m thinking of her and I see a stone, I collect it. “It’s been two decades since I came to this place and I can’t find you.” Not here! she sings. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Surely, my connection with my great aunt, my heart, the deepest w...
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New Orleans

  I’ve been trying to write about my upbringing and my faith and who I am and where I came from. And the more I dig, the less I know. I sent a text message to my uncle. Me: How did your parents meet? Uncle: Max was stationed at what was then “Camp Polk,” later became a fort. Was in NO on leave when he saw Lillian working as a salesclerk at a shoe store. Me: Ah! So they met in NOLA! And she grew up there? Uncle: oui I sent a message to my aunt. Aunt: My mom was walking home from work on Canal Street. My dad was in the army, in special training. He saw my mom and tried to meet her in the street but she ignored him. He following her home to her mother’s house. He knocked on the door and said, “I’m not leaving until your daughter comes out.” It was love at first sight. My mom was really beautiful and my dad was very handsome. When I get Mom on the phone, I ask her. She says my grandfather saw my grandmother out shopping for shoes. He tried to talk to her and she ign...
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The First Twenty Reasons I Didn’t Write on April 22

  The First Twenty Reasons I Didn’t Write on April 22 1.       I am still a working woman in 2022. 2.       I have three sons who need to be fed and taken places and my husband can’t do every bloody thing for us, though he does do most of it. 3.       I have a dog. 4.       That week, I baked a cake and forgot the sugar. And I baked a corn pudding and forgot the eggs. (Truly disgusting, thanks for asking.) Also, I forgot the password on my work computer after a long weekend. Naturally, I convinced myself I had dementia or a brain tumor like my old granny, Lillian, and I got so wrapped up imagining my funeral, shopping for cotton shrouds and seaweed caskets for my plot at the green cemetery that I didn’t remember to write.   5.       I couldn’t find my special composition notebook with the gold tape on the spine. 6.       We were getting close to my baby brother’s 47 th birthday...
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