Posts for June 10, 2026

You make me want to be a better woman—

not grander,
nor more admired,

but more wholly myself.

A woman no longer at war
with her own reflection.
One who wears her years
as the oak wears its rings—
not as evidence of loss,
but of becoming.

You make me want to unlearn
the careful shrinking
that life mistakes for wisdom.

To inhabit my own skin
the way sunlight inhabits a window—
without apology.

To trust the softness
that survives disappointment,
the strength
that asks for no witness.

You make me want
to loosen the old knots of sorrow,
to open the locked rooms,

and let the forgotten music
find its way back
into the house of my heart.

my brother-in-law
drags strips of flounder
through egg wash
pats bread crumbs
lightly seasoned
into fresh flesh to fry
three batches each
better than the last

standing outside on a steep rolling hill
amongst hills that the eye can see
the sun dancing on hilltops
to acknowledge their presence to the world

my boots sinking into the mud
a rock stabbing the backside of my boot
creating a little hole
the light breeze on my heel

the horses galloping across
the valleys below
the morning dew creating rainbows
as they run by

a wave of corn and grass 
tickling against my nose
as an open bottle of bourbon
sits ready at the table for a taste

Kentucky
the place that i love
the place i can breathe
the place that i call home

The hotel room I’d occupied

for the past two weeks

had the unfortunate coincidence

of resembling a year

about which I had

few moorings left 

from my youthful studies.

Besides the usual throngs

of earthquakes, hurricanes, and coups,

I could find few examples

of positive acts 

that changed our humanity. 

The rise and fall 

of deaths and dreams

seemed inevitable,

the only promise being

that we could not predict 

what came next

even when we planned 

for greatness to be exhumed 

later.

I worried that this trend

would weave through every year

and only allow us to knit

one conclusion about ourselves.

Then I saw the story about penicillin and understood

that some of the brightest moments 

of our histories

are accidents,

which unsettled me even more. 

poets paint pictures
inside peculiar places
potent with power

Twenty-nine point lead
disappears in Big Apple.
Flight back to Lone Star
will be only drink orders
and the sound of jet engines.

1st Quarter

Feels like the last time you were on the floor
Took all you had and you’re having trouble
Evening the score in your own house
And now this seems like too tall of a task to face
You keep trying to avoid the screens
The pick and roll
And it feels like you spent the rest of the quarter 
Trying to stay out of foul trouble
Avoid the double
And you look up and 12 minutes have passed
You are now down by 19

2nd Quarter

You’ve made your adjustments,
Got your shit together
And now you begin
To even the odds
Because you realized
That this is your house

3rd Quarter

Don’t think they won’t push back though
Don’t think for a second
They won’t press you and make you think
That you aren’t meant to win tonight
Because the opponent has the upper hand
And, in fact
You may leave here tied
And need to play two road games
Back-to-back

4th Quarter

If you give it all you have
For twelve more minutes 
And put your whole heart and
Soul in it
You’ll realize that it’s not always
How you start
But how you finish
And all I need is my outstretched fingertips
To win this
Right in the Knick of time
And so we arrive at the end
Of
Game 5

watching my kids 
split
between 
houses 
staying 
separated 
for a week 

reminds me 
how powerless
one can be
to mend lonliness 
for others 

After they hooked up 
he led her outside & kissed
her hand like some Downton Abbey
playboy. Later she called him back to talk 
about constellations, the both of them past curfew 
& starry-eyed with the novelty
of it all. I think I’m in love, she’d whispered
to me as if it was a secret or something
I’d earned. I saw them again that summer
down at the lake; he was teaching
her to skip stones, one tawny arm hooked
around her waist like a bungee cord. So what
if I’m a voyeur? We can’t all take the leaps
& lips & limbs we want. A meteor
is what you make of it—a death
wish, a soft kiss in the dark.

I had a love hate relationship
with sandcastles.

On one hand, I thought they were
really, really cool.
I’d combine towers,
build walls, build moats,
imagine kings and knights and movie-lead heroes
to fight villains and monsters and pirates
and knights from other sandcastles
that lived further down the beach.
It was a fun hour or so,
a great creative expression while on a vacation.

But there was always the nagging thought
that, like all great civilizations,
my sandcastle could only last so long.
Not like the crayon drawings I made
(which would take years to lose)
all of my kings and knights and heroes
met swift ends under the foot of
a little brat, or quietly
when the tide came in.

I was my sandcastles’ only recordkeeper
and, for some reason, I never thought
to write any of it down.
And, try as I might,
all that I seem to remember now
was that they were a fun way
to spend an hour or so.