Posts for June 12, 2026 (page 3)

The sweet lady who bought my house
and saves my unforwarded mail texts me:

Did anything strange ever happen when you lived here? 
Her dogs look up and bark at nothing.
A book has flown off of a shelf.
She says she doesn’t feel safe

in the home where I rebuilt myself.
I restored the house, over a century old,
sorely abused and auctioned off, but
nothing weird ever happened to me there,

not even after midnight, 
not even when I asked for it! 
begging my late husband so many nights to visit 
because he appeared only in dreams–

        a Cheerios box for a chest
        with a slit from top to bottom
        that he opened like a vest to reveal 
        a nest of straw 

        or shuffling along the farm’s gravel road
        in his Carhartt coveralls, using a shovel like a walking stick
        I told him he needed to go lie down
        his skin was the color of an old celery stalk

        only once did he show up looking normal
        for dinner at the big house on the farm, 
        kiss me, and say, I saved you a seat

        most often he showed up with a carload of buddies
        and dumped me for someone else,
        left me stranded in unfamiliar cities–

        the sole way my brain could process severed love.

Gosh, I’m so sorry, I reply. Nothing like that ever happened to me!
Later, I show the texts to my daughter
who reminds me when she spent the night and saw
a man’s shadow walk through the kitchen into a wall.

Any ghost must have felt
no point in bothering me.

It starts with electricity

hanging in the air,

a change of direction

in the wind,

the goosebumps

on my skin.

My spirit is heavy,

like a curtain

of torrential rainfall

around me.

Too much,

too soon,

and I’ll be drowning.

The pit in my stomach

the size of a peach seed,

for now,

uneasy

like a predator

on the prowl.

It’s familiar,

yet different.

I can’t help but think:

What is it?

I’ve been seeing the cues

and following the clues

that whisper

everything is static.

I’ve seen the signs.

I know the times.

It’s bound to begin.

Change is coming around

to unsettle me again.

That’s okay.

Change is my friend.

I miss my grandmother every day
and only this week
uncovered another level of that grief

but I cannot see her
as a constellation
even though I know that should be a comfort.

My grandmother
placing rows of canned beets
in an earth-floored cellar.

My grandmother picking stones and
blemished potatoes from a conveyor belt
so some wife will get full value from her 5-pound bag.

My grandmother washing used sheets of tin foil
to cover the ham in the oven and wrapping it
so we can savor those packets of love later in the week.

My grandmother putting her hand out
stilling my fidgeting in the church pew beside her then
gently touching my arm to take the sting from the rebuke.

My grandmother kneeling to plant black-faced pansies
in their fancy bonnets along the front walk
of the house my grandfather built.

My grandmother muttering under her breath
about the brambles
in the overgrown raspberry patch.

My grandmother tipping mason jars of tadpoles
back into the stream
when her grandchildren aren’t looking.

I loved my grandmother before she was a constellation
so I look for her in the kitchen and the garden and the church pew
and the mirror of my child.

It isn’t that they’re anxious for earth,
or the curious experience
of rain that does not touch,

“Follow astrological seasons and you

Grandkids no longer torn
between two homes 

Mom forever gone,
Dad’s home is home. 

Irreparably broken,
life I dreamed of gone. 

New stepmoman
absolute gemstone, 

thank God
for that.

“So is this your baby off to school in the fall”
    Yes…my youngest
“Mine too…isn’t it so exciting for them”
    Yes…I am so excited for her
“Oh is your baby a girl? I have two boys.”
    My oldest is a boy
“I would think letting go of a daughter would be harder”
    Letting go…of parts of your own heart…
    Boy, Girl, not sure that matters…your heart is your heart.

 In our Victorian 40 years now. Two Generations.
You’d think we owned it by now and
we do, on paper, but really we’re just tenants.
A hundred years before us, maybe a
hundred years after?

Called the Joseph Smith house on city records—not the
prophet— a pharmacist downtown who had the house
built in the 1880’s and sold it less than 5 years later.
Hardly left a footprint but who does?
5 years? 40 years?

The  neighborhood was Frontier Lexington
140 years ago, almost country.
Scary Northside 40 years ago ( Is it
safe? asked a friend.)

Now it’s gentled as they call it and we’re the
old folks In the big house—the only legal sign
we’ve been here a Joseph Anthony notation
in city records.  Joseph Smith and me.
That’s something at least. 

But you have to go look for it.

sonder, n: the realization and understanding
                that all other people have lives
                as complex as one’s own.
                        -Merriam-Webster Dictionary 

Ever had someone
crash into you
like a meteor?

Spring into your life like kismet
propelled by cosmic certainty
completely balanced
like the sun and the moon
being the same size in the sky?

Like your souls have already speaking to each other
long before your bodies have gotten the chance?

This person shares a space with you
  for a night
  for an hour
  for a moment
leaving you
  forever improved

like you never would have reached
your fullest self
without their touch.

I’ve seen stories explode
from opened beer bottles
and perspectives changed
in hotel conversation.
Someone once saved my life
with a perfectly timed smile.

I want to know everything about you
and the worlds that created you
before sending all of you in my direction.

Tell me your tales of love and disappointment,
joy and grief, success and failure.
Show me what makes you you,
the magnanimous individual
gracing my skies right now.
Give me this, and I will do the same.

For we are creatures craving connection
and that creates moments beyond logic
of meeting people and unequivocally knowing
they’re supposed to be there
however briefly that ends up being.

Just the mere existence of you
has already made me a better man–
stronger, with a greater capacity for courage
from uttering that single hello–
so it doesn’t matter to me
if we never share another word
in all the time we have left on this world.

But how much more
could a lifetime
of knowing you
offer?