Hair always dyed a shade of youth and vigor,
remnants coloring the papery skin around her ears and forehead.
Little round body that tells the hard tale of Mexican women-
low to the ground for work and round in the hips for babies.
Breasts too small for her body and a heart muscle too weak for all that she would feel and experience.
Ankles swollen, eyes rheumy, thick glasses. Her Spanish not accepted; English not sufficient.
House dresses in so many flowered patterns, some shade of pink always on her lips- creeping through the lines forming there.
And she was beautiful. Magnificent. The Queen of my heart. Read more…
January 2015
When the perceiving heart goes haywire
And the circuits are overloaded,
a devil lies behind every bush.
Around every corner, a monster. Read more…
After growing up in a wildly Conservative church and watching it attempt to destroy my family in the wake of my sisters’ coming-outs, I determined to have nothing to do with organized religion again.
If one were to measure my belief in “the Divine”, it would definitely have to be on a sliding scale. The sliding scale would look something like this:
Good day: “Spiritual” in the “new-agey,” search for greater meaning sense.
Medium day: Agnostic – I really don’t know what to believe. I don’t have proof either way.
Bad day (aka, I watched the news): I don’t think there is a God. And if there is, he/she’s flipped us the bird and walked away. Read more…
I sat there in the child therapist’s office, wondering how I got there. Read more…
Come closer.
Warm your hands near the fire of my heart.
Come closer.
Circle yourself around my ribcage
and absorb
the heat, Read more…
I am so cranky this morning that I’m getting on my OWN nerves. I’m taking a lesson from my woman crush: Jill Scott. I mean, really. How can you not love her?
With her love of fashion, fun, handsome men and humanitarianism, I’ve often wondered if I could have been Audrey Hepburn in another life. But what most endears me to her is her quote: “I was born with an enormous need for affection and a terrible need to give it.” What is so apparent to me in these words is a quiet desperation, desperation with which most naturally affectionate people immediately relate.
People who know me would describe me as very warm and affectionate, bordering on mushy. I’m a hugger. A kisser. A lover. A giver of warm words and gifts. It bubbles out of me almost constantly, like a well with a deep-seeded spring of passion. I don’t have to try; it just happens, and I adore when all of those things are given to me in return.
The moon arrives each afternoon
no sooner than it left, it seems…
The hours of weakened sunlight zoom by
as if being chased by
some great winter beast.
The rays hide to the south,
lurking behind storms and clouds…
All the earth
begins to still and slide into rest,
It is breaking through -
New grass in a spring pasture
Working to find cracks
and holes
In which to reach for sunlight.
I step out of the shower, surrounded by mirrors. Every day, I revisit the stretch marks from pregnancy. Check. The sagging skin from my weight loss. Check. My miniscule chest. Check. I look away.
“I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire…”