Sundays are filled with church services,
rest, and spending time with loved ones,
so hope and beauty show through a
little brighter on Sundays

They say humans are creatures of habit
but I think our regular reinvention is pretty spectacular
          mundane trials of life undo our comfortable routines
          death steals our loved ones
          age alters our bodily abilities
and we rewrite the script:
change out what was familiar
for what is now necessary.
          I walk past the house where my former family still lives
          I go days at a time without seeing my own children
          I sleep in the arms of someone who, like me, was sworn for life to another person
What does it mean
for something to feel normal?
Living is a story of same and different, all at once
the only habit waking each day
          and recognizing the sun on our face.

6/28/26

Someone is hanging out at my house.
Someone is almost 15 years old.
Someone is the baby of the family.  

Someone is watching cartoons.
Someone is also coloring.
Someone is a softball phenom.  

Someone is epileptic.
Someone doesn’t want to be
Where her great grandma is dying.

Someone is so childlike.
I’m so glad someone is at my house.

I break from the branch.

Whose? Aimless paces
I hear making way 
to the city, trip
over Cyprus knees,
drop, retrieve keys, map;

mice and vole scurry
away from her so
she should go, safe now
embraced in silk net
gained climbing over
walls, gates, human things.

Leather-bound hair lock,
I make it mine so
she stays with me now
canopy by day
then, gliding streetlight
high, give me a chance
to gain your trust like

I have the outcasts,
consume all of you
so like me you know
how to hear the grass
sing when you fly low
over it, hunting
for future offerings
of fur and mixed bones.

I live you

quickly correct:
*love
I love you!

think: but the original is true, too

Shave off a slice of the gummy bear.
Don’t eat the whole thing. 
It’s too strong. Makes me paranoid.
I know. Because you used all of it. 
A simple shaving dissolved in sleepy time tea
is all you need. 
I’m dying, Douglas. 
I think I need a little more than that. 
I know, Mom. 

**Hera Rising is the project name given to the next planned stratospheric skydive. Along with trying to break several existing skydiving records, it will also be the first time such a feat has been attempted by a woman. They hope to launch this mission by the end of 2026.**

When you really stop to think about it,
even the greatest plot twists
only have the one chance to get you.

But for the twist to work, it also needs
you to be in a place
to see its inevitability.

How often do you ask yourself
if you would be ready
for an impossible opportunity
to suddenly become real?

In time’s forever march forward
it will soon be your turn
to behold the curvature of the earth.

Will you be able to hold your eyes open
and keep your wits about you?

I can say
way up above the clouds,
a higher form of thrill
is waiting for your courage
and faith
but be warned
because sometimes
you only get the one chance.

Please,
allow me to be
the first to say
when that day comes
I hope you come back alive.

I pray
when the air becomes too thin
that you’ll still draw breath into your lungs,
that when you’re faced with a marathon of falling
you won’t be overcome by fear,
that when the anxiety sends you into a fatal spin
you’ll find a way to stabilize yourself,
that when it feels like all eyes are on you
as you are about to crash into the earth
you’ll discover within yourself
a fortitude you may not know you have–
the ability, a willingness
to live the same life
as all the rest of the world.

I pray
that when the odds seem insurmountable
you’ll recognize in your own heart this belief:

your capacity to love and,
more importantly,
to be loved
for everything you are.

You have the power to make it back home.

Just remember
it’s an opportunity 
that doesn’t come often.
You may only have the one chance
to claim all this future as your own.

So ask yourself,
when your moment inevitably comes
will you have the courage
and faith
to take the plunge?

knowing he’d kill something
for sport, pick up ticks

and poison ivy oils to bring
back in the house because

I know what it is to be trapped
and yowling out the window screen

and all of April flitting
past you on its way to bloom.

Enter the underground
temple through a courtyard
lit by a single square

opening in the ceiling.
The paving stones are worn,
but not smooth. The air smells

like earth and is just damp
enough to feel cool. There is no
altar, no oracle, only

the faint sound of dripping
water to guide you  
to what may be found.    

She does not write
but reads every
sign in the sky
ripple on the river
splintering twig
fluttering rider
ready to swarm