Posts for June 15, 2026 (page 11)

Glory days are different for each person.
For some, little league was the epitome,
for others, high school district tournament.

Glory: the best moment of greatest joy
for you were the catalyst of the cheers.
Sad truth– few were looking,

even before the “career-ending” injury.
All sports aside, you never know
when you have just enjoyed

your last of something:
holding hands with a crush
best furry friend belly rub

slow drive home as a licensed driver
meal with your favorite grandma
moment of life.

When you predict the final experience
there is expectation, pressure to perform.
Natural endings contain no striving,

just a delay of comprehension. In
those fleeting moments both the shouting,
the stillness stick with you, make up

who you will be, but they only belong to you–
even when in tandem with someone else’s
memory. Glory is in the eye of the beholder,

life is in the dash.

rearrange my face with yours
make me unrecognisable
ceaselessly reshaped
until i find
a form i can love

Salt lines

Evidence of what was once there

Frozen ground with remnants of glitter from New Year’s Eve

Stanzas bouncing around my brain

A cracked windshield, a fourth of a tank

Just waiting for me

Big breath

Nausea teetering behind my teeth

Sleep threatening to cover me

Following the pattern

Never got me anywhere

we start our lives in a tomato patch
as gangling sprouts bursting out
breaking the brown ground
bounding without sight
toward a sun bright
shining through
sky blue

we plant ourselves as bred to bear
ruby ripe fruit red round from
farm to table no care taken
to prune stems growing
skinny and spindly
spry tight lime
green leaves

we grow wild branches shooting out
never so cynical to doubt the
sheltering sun warming
dark soil so loyal so
tender and joyful
to cradle pale
frail roots

we all think we will live well forever
each of us under summer sun
milling the light into living
raising rain from clay
flowering by day
fruit spright
by night

we learn with time time will fell us all
creatures reaching in our season
for a next life not like hosta
or iris rising from root
but from seed cast
against the wind
to ground

The first breath you / feel you’re allowed

to take. Everything / slows into just

breathing. Thoughts / recede like a tide

into the rhythm. / Screaming voices

fade away. Make / room to pull in

air deliberately. / Then push it out.

Your body settles. / Seconds pass.

Let them.  Everything / will come back

when it’s their time. / Tranquility

peace, calm; find your / best self underneath.

I spilled the same latte twice. 

Once into my cupholder, and the top of my unzipped purse. 

Flimsy lid, slightly unattached, 
ejected a sneaky drain of
espresso, thin almondmilk
and ice, to piss down the cup’s side,
annoyingly perceptible.
And goddamn sticky.  

And then, I knocked the whole thing into the seat.

I had resolved to seize monday 
and clean the mess. Until clumsy
joint of errant elbow swang wide,
knocked the stupid cup-straw first-
into the space between my car seat
and center console.  

A puddle in the floorboard:
a crack in sanity, where weekly dreams go to die.

Alone in my room–
the cowboy gone–
humming to myself
an old church song

A hymn about salvation,
grace, and love–
outside my window,
I hear the mourning dove

I sell my body for
Miss Sarah and Joe,
and the girls here with me
are all those I know

Sometimes we line up
on the steps of the stair–
with face paint on,
pretty dress, coiffed hair

When the men look at me,
I think of my Pa,
and how he would cry
if he knew of them all

Other times I sit,
alone in my room–
I think of married ladies,
and my life in this tomb

Now I’m getting older–
I get chosen less–but
Miss Sarah says that
it’s all for the best

the polo-clad lad, like a 

To A Younger Self

As I look back to my childhood,

Across the stolen years,

What would I say to my younger self,

To calm my nightly fears?

Of course, I’d say that things get better,

Just wait, I promise you’ll see,

But mostly things get different,

When you become what you can be.

The lies you were taught to believe,

When you were too young to know,

You’ll recognize for what they are,

When you are older and grown.

Of course it takes work and reflection,

To dig out of the bunker you’ve built,

Which was needed for safety and comfort,

Though constructed from second hand guilt. 

The pain you suppress in your young days,

Festers inside like a cyst,

It will haunt your dreams night and day,

In the mill of your mind it’s the grist.

Of course it will toughen you and age you,

You’ll be told you were always an old man,

That’s how you’ll make sense of your surroundings,

Growing up as quick as you can. 

Though you don’t recognize it immediately,

That pain is a double edged sword,

Sure it haunts you and hurts you,

But it’s given you strength unexplored.

The trick you’ll find when you’re older,

I’ll tell you young man I have found,

Is trusting those now who surround you,

And laying that double edged sword back down.

One more thing I suppose I should tell you,

You’ll learn it I think when you’re grown,

Your pain belonged to others before you,

And was given to you but on loan.

You may assess it, label it, and reject it.

It’s yours to do with as you please,

Accept it, acknowledge it and release it,

And then you replace it with peace.

First give yourself the love you are missing,

Be the person you needed back then,

To be able give love to others,

You must first see yourself as a friend.

No, the path ahead will not be easy,

You’ve walked through the darkness alone,

But the light ahead is well worth the journey,

Your past is the story that you own.

In sunlight in the coffee shop she is drinking iced coffee, eating pastry with a fork, looking at her phone. A thick journal with a deep red leather cover is next to a paperback book. I can’t see the title. To her right is a colorful spiral bound notebook. Like me she has several books. Her gray backpack sits in a yellow chair. She’s wearing black Ecco sandals, pale-blue blue jeans. Her printed top, gathered under her breast, has a scoop neckline. Brown glasses, her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, is held with a gray scrunchy. Her complexion is soft and smooth. She reminds me of me.

watching life pass by
purity slowly transforms
determined and old

She has walks out carrying her phone. Through the glass window I see her pass out of view, then returns, opens the leather journal and begins to write. She reminds me of me only I walk like an old woman. With clear skin, soft and pristine, she has her whole life ahead of her unlike the woman in the courtroom earlier—several felonies and six trips to the ER after suicide attempts, ruddy complexion, streaked, bleached hair, strong jaw. She could have once been the girl at the yellow table in the coffee shop, writing before the spiral began down into the maya of matter impossible to contain. The judge in the high seat with a fake soft concerned voice cannot understand why she cannot get it together. She might have one day been holy and pure. The girl sitting in the yellow chair is gone. The table empty.  No lovely journals or paperback.

come of age, I write
watch the innocence of youth
a slow transition

Another woman sits in the sunlight, older, her skin rough, her body thicker. She wears a fuchsia hoodie, her jeans well-worn. There are no soft journals. she wears black tennis shoes. Types on a black laptop. Her cell phone, coffee cup, briefcase, black. Sunglasses perched on her hair pulled back, black. She types with determined fingers. Her pen, red and black, sits in high contrast on the yellow table. She too reminds me of me in the coffee shop drinking latte, writing.

sidewalk in the rain
becomes a glass reflection
in the window streaked