if you want to have a father you must first be a daughter she said you are a self-serving daughter you have forgotten how to be a daughter, he has convictions she said you have desires desires but not convictions, you have built walls she said hard walls cold hard impenetrable heart contemptible mean vicious…
Category: Meditations
Grasshopper
A grasshopper stole my sweater this morning. Today, I suppose, he needed it more than I. He dug his toes into the fabric. I shook it; I tried to transfer him to a stick. But he held on. So I hung the sweater on the rail just outside the back door, the one under the…
The Lady in the Window Seat
She was aggressive off the bat. Perhaps that’s why it bothered me. I wouldn’t have minded sitting in the other seat, but the aggression threw me off. All I said was, “I think that’s my seat?” With the inflection in my voice, that soft question intonation, that vocal gesture indicating, perhaps I’m wrong, but maybe…
The Fall of a Sparrow
I killed a sparrow today. As I sped across the Texas highway at 85 mph, the sun just beginning to set behind me, blanketing the landscape in deep late-summer hues of green and blue, my eyes were heavy with the end of the long day and the thought of the long drive ahead. My mind…
Recovery
Recovery is a loaded word. Although inherently it means relief from pain, it is replete with it. When one imagines recovery, one usually envisions the end; the point at which someone has arrived at a state of relief. But what recovery really is, is not an end at all. It is a beginning; a process that…
Chick
I hear your little feet, the soft sound of tiny patters through the summer grass. I hear your little wing, the feathers catching and gently rubbing as you stretch it out over your pointed toes. And your quick shake as all the feathers puff out and swirl around rapidly before you slick them all down…
What if I were to disappear?
What if I were to disappear? To be swept away into the luscious absence of time and space. What affects would trail behind? What would become of my things? Would they lay still and ardently untouched for weeks before a reverence period past? Or would acquaintances of my daily routines arrive and take a share…