Where I’m from is an old little house,Fraying at the seams with waterlogged edges,An enclosed porch with a screen door that falls off, A door that doesn’t lock or unlock, A yard once full of fun things,Now reduced to empty grass. No more rotting swingsets,Broken slides,Reclaimed sandboxes, Dead […]
Rambling oak branches that curiously reach this way and that, like energized neurons trapped in a cerebellum. Distant city lights, which sparkle like the white of an eye against the darkness of a deep, blue sapphire iris. The sound of the train in the early […]
I love my parents, I do—it’s true,But they taught me everything I shouldn’t do.I played Barbies alone, tucked away in my room,While they stared at their phones, lost in the gloom. They expected me to raise my little brother,But why couldn’t that be the job […]
Lord– Countless familial and novel names filled my childhood prayers. Words followed the same pattern, cadence, and tempo as I recited: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray […]
What would you be willing to do to get back to your significant other after twenty years of separation? In Epic: The Musical, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, discovers exactly how far he is willing to go to return home to his wife. Epic is based […]
“If Santa isn’t real, what else have you lied to me about? The Easter Bunny? What about the Tooth Fairy?” These were the words that ten-year-old me screamed at my parents in the middle of the meat section of a H-E-B. For clarification, H-E-B is […]
I listened to you sing like a golden canary in the branches of an ancient oak. I watched you dance just like a graceful ballerina who made time stand still. I watched you wither away as the sickness chewed and gnawed stripping away at your […]
I hold my younger self like a thrashing feral animal –In a tight and safe embrace.She’s fighting back hard,Baring her teeth;I’m sure to her,My arms feel like a cage.I’m sure to her,I’m the thing she hides from at night.But her teeth and nails are blunt,And […]
I remember The gull’s cry as he wheels above salty shore, A cloak of mist wrapped round sand and sea, The crunch of sand beneath boots and the clink of mail, driving rain, Long marches under heavy packs and long nights on the cold ground, […]
She wakes to the sun, before it can rise. Bones too tired to stretch, eyes drooping. Hushed kettle hums, dim glowing fire, Teary eyed, dreams still bright just. – For the world, lay at her back. A steady push and unrelenting track, From the mat […]
With steady hands and guarded eyes,She treads beneath the shifting skies.Through storm and sun, through drought and rain,She guards the forest’s breath and vein. For every seed, a promise planted,for every tree, a life she’s mounted.The guardian of the earth’s green flame,A forester, by heart and name.