The crushing weight of expectations fills your cup
until the wine reverts to water
spilling all over your new tile floor.
Stainless steel appliances rusting.
Guilt stains your bedsheets
like blood from a wound re-opened
with the letters you left unread.
These, unlike the tiles, will stain.
You’ll paint over the dining room
and repaint bedrooms the same shade of green
so was the color really the problem?
Or was it the painter?
i’m 11 & there is so much softness in me
my phone is a revolving door of men
from Kik who tell me so who ask me to
bare the softest parts of me to them
when all i want is a friend
to make me less lonely
i’m 11 & learning love from the quick chatter
of my parents voices going to battle inside of
a house cooled by fire
inside of me is a house cooled by fire
all of the men
i should not be talking to
on my phone hold the match
i’m an only child & want something other than
my parents love to satiate me
i’m searching for something
a void is in me but i’m young & soft
i don’t have a name for it but it’s silence haunts
me like the icy hands of that ice boy back
in second grade cornering me in his whiteness
any chance he could get putting his hands
in my pants at every opportunity or
her
one of the four other black girls in my grade i
called a friend
how she pinned me in a bathroom
stall during break demanding me to kiss her whole
i think they too were searching for
something their voids so open & deep
they started showing their trauma early on
knew the time & place to give it a name
my face must have been so soft
my ear the place they would
whisper that name into
yet i’m 11
& have forgotten what to call it,
it sticks to me like an unrecognizable
shadow whispering to me
years later as i’ve begun my adult years
yearning to banish it from this body
Have a father who’s a pediatrician with his office in the first floor of your house, the sound of crying babies coming up through the floor boards, some patients so afraid they run out the door screaming, have to be chased down.
Live in a state of perpetual longing for Dad’s approval. Live in a time when boundaries and roles were not such an issue. Your father is your pediatrician. Hear him joke about scared kids who make a fuss over an injection that takes just a moment, praise those who are stoic.
Stay out beyond curfew on the deadline date for requisite camp shots, DPT and MMR. Get growled at by your dad who comes down to the first floor in his boxers, turns on the lights and pulls the serum from the fridge and the syringes from the sterilizer.
Your stomach turns as he swabs your arm with alcohol. Don’t look, don’t cry, be the strongest silent soldier you can be. Maybe still not breathing when he says Done, tells you to go write it on your chart, and heads back upstairs to bed.
Plunk yourself in the swivel chair at the reception desk, pull your record, a 5 x 7 card filled with your father’s fountain pen scratches. The words on the card blur. Things go black, your cheek and shoulder slam the linoleum, the chair skids, crashes the opposite wall.
The first but not the only time, you learn it is your vagal nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body. It can overreact to triggers, the brain signaling the heart rate and blood pressure to suddenly drop. Yes, this is the opposite of gearing up more usefully for fight or flight.
As an adult, my doctor relieves my wimpy heart with this translation: Your father’s daughter, you were trying too, too hard to be brave.
Have you ever been in a room,
the same room five days a week?
Filled with hustle and bustle,
and no one recognizes your presence.
At least that’s what it feels like.
They say “don’t isolate”,
yet they shut you out.
They say, “pick up your spirit”,
yet they snatch away your good mood.
At least that’s what it feels like.
I can’t remember!
When was the last time I felt invisible?
Don’t need to remember,
it’s happening now.
At least that’s what it feels like.
They have secret conversations,
in other rooms,
I hear them clearly, until they start to whisper.
They are afriad of what I might hear?
At least that’s what it feels like.
Are they discussing me?
Are they discussing things
that I too am involved in,
but they don’t want me to be?
At least that’s what it feels like.
They converse daliy and often in front of me,
conversations I could never be a part of.
Do they not see their rudeness?
Do they not recognize what they are doing?
At least that’s what it feels like.
They laugh at things,
that I don’t find funny,
They talk about the common places they go,
that I’m not welcomed at.
At least that’s what it feels like.
They don’t seem to care,
or they pretend to not notice me.
I’m the odd man out.
Yet, I stand out tremendously.
At least that’s what it feels like.
Remember Sesame Street?
“One of these things are not
like the others, one of these things
just doesn’t belong”. That’s me.
At least that’s what it feels like.
One makes comments that are
sometimes rude or vulgar,
The other laughs as if that
was The funniest thing said ever.
At least that’s what it feels like.
The life they’ve lived,
I can’t say I have.
The life I’ve lived,
I know they haven’t.
At least that’s what it feels like.
I thought our differences,
showed we are more alike than not,
or maybe I’m just jealous
that I’m not “one of them”.
At least that’s what it feels like.
Do I say anything?
Or do I keep it bottled up?
I might need to express myself.
or I might lose my cool and explode.
At least that’s what it feels like.
I’m done!!
Rarely do we ever meet a person
at a clean break in their story.
We are not the beginnings or ends of a book
but sometimes the chapters that create a conflict
often necessary for protagonistic growth
(because when do main characters ever run toward the danger?)
and the roles we play may be determined
solely on our goals and means to achieve them.
Are you a sidekick meant to fight alongside
the hero in challenges that litter their path?
Are you a love interest meant to stir up emotions
where previous hurts leave one closed off and jaded?
Or are you a villain who threatens peace in some way
intentionally or in careless, unconscientious acts?
Or do I maybe have it backwards?
Should I just be that good, easy to talk to friend
comfortable enough to confide a little more in?
Am I a potential future component
to longheld dreams still needing assembly?
Or am I just another guy misreading signals
and now your afraid of breaking an innocent man’s heart?
The possibilities are truly endless, but chances are
nothing but good can come from carefully crafted friendship.
If you’re the hero, or I, or someone we’ve yet to meet,
I more than anything want for you, me, or them to succeed.
As for me and my life, whether you’re just a chapter,
the book, a sequel, or the rest of the series,
I am joyous to have you as part of this story.
What an odd day. It starts with an early morning text from a friend who just lost someone from ALS. Time’s going so fast. A moment of panic that I missed my second husband’s and my father’s heavenly birthdays, but a quick glance at my cellphone tells me, no, it’s only early June. On the way to the post office, I drive by the corner where the tiny Caintuckee Grill used to stand, that Aunt Marilyn once worked in, now a colossal Church of Scientology. Then, the assisted living place where Mom spent most of her last years. At the next light, a five-way intersection, something makes me picture the long-gone building where my deceased first husband owned a White Palace restaurant sued by White Castle for name infringement years before I met him. Another few miles, I pass where The Colonial Cottage stood from 1933 to 2023, known for its goetta, fried chicken, cream pies. I ate there for sixty years. Two more blocks, with time to kill before a doctor’s appointment, I enter Forest Lawn Cemetery, where I once walked with Richard nearly every evening—his relatives buried there. Disoriented when I discover the Dr. Caleb Manly Mansion, built in 1852, is nowhere in sight, replaced by a rundown trailer. I park in shade near the lake shore pierced by cypress knees, put the windows down, grab my cellphone, enter the Merlin bird app, press the sound-ID tab, take a deep breath, wait for birds to be heard and identified: Northern cardinal, Red-winged blackbird, American robin, European starling, Carolina wren, Tufted titmouse, Downy woodpecker, Brown-headed cowbird.
Having a Type A personality meant reaching for the stars and
believing that nothing, not one single thing, could get in the way.
Lillian always got straight A’s, even though college courses got
difficult. She knew that perfection was forever a possibility.
Having a Type A personality meant being put into a box that
one could never get out of: You have to achieve everything.
Emma always thought that losing would mean she would
lose her title. She had to overwork herself to become the best.
Having a Type A personality meant the stress of the world on
one’s shoulders. Prone to stress and the diseases that came along.
Claire always wanted to compete, even if it wasn’t a competition.
She needed to save her health and her personality didn’t help.
Having a Type A personality meant relating to internet jokes
about oneself and the concept of having a certain personality.
Ellie always used to believe in the labels that made everyone
understand her better, but she couldn’t stay trapped in a box.
I latch the beagle to her blue tie-out under the windmill, then slide into the canvas lawn chair. Leaning back into the padding, legs spraddled out, my body remembers the cool Atlantic breezes of Mers-les-bains. The brightly painted seafront houses of Le Treport where we could just walk up to the wharf for moules or croissants. Somewhere near the top of the windmill, metal clinks softly as the wind chinks the blades forward. I slink even farther down in the chair as I feel large muscles release, remember how we raised glasses of Stella and wine to toast those slow afternoons. How the air sang through our hair on that waterfront patio. I hear the slur of waves murmuring as my beagle chews on a pine cone, here on this clay dam, at lake’s edge on our high hill above the Licking River.
I keep dreaming that I fall from the sky
faster than Icarus
but slower than the rain
The repetition rattles me
more than death brushing my shoulder in a crowded room
but less than the thud that jolts me awake when I know I’ve hit the ground
Floating above clouds
just below the stratosphere
far from my favorite tree’s reach
I call to anyone who can hear me
until my voice breaks
and my screams get lost somewhere in the troposphere
For a child to follow
as she stares out the airplane window
en route to a destination unknown
