“Your persistence delivered me here. I am indebted to you.”

“There are days when I regret making friends with my grief, but then I remember all the times she / helped me give birth to my joys.”

“And for a second, we were one and the same. Two people, lost, searching for something we didn’t know existed. We were both singing songs no one else could hear.”

“though the table feels empty, with me alone / the air thick with unspoken words, / I savor this bowl, finding comfort”

“She is looking back at me. At my weeds and vines, flies and thorns, slime and moss, my uncontained overgrowth. Unfettered. Unafraid. Similarly besotted.”

“now it’s mother, / tied with the ropes of rebellion, / gagged by the makeshift cloth / made of the skin of her daughter’s heart—”

“When can I rest my knuckles? / Where shall I grow my tender dreams?”

“In your offspring, the future women of your bloodline, will you learn to be empowered to take up space; to stop hiding things about yourself that seem different in this cold, new world; to feel content in how much you know about the way the world works.”

“souls settle in between the crevices that is where i find myself / a beautiful disaster / chaos meets the calm”

“This disintegration is a calling / of sorts. Charmingly uncontrollable.”

“The pages, open and breathing, flutter in the wind, and memories of him wave hello from my desk.

No new movements today, yet no old ones either. I sit. I wave back. I write nothing.”