no shortcuts.

"Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet"

I know it's all going to change. It's going to change fast.
It's not that it will change fast—I'm fine with the change,
I'm fine with fast. But do I actually need to be in it?
Couldn't this be like a "set it and forget it" moment?
Couldn't it be like ruby shoes, click-click-click—
poof. Maybe I don't even like slow. I thought I wanted slow.

"Slow and steady wins the race." But I haven't seen a hare
or a turtle. Actually, I'm kind of a mess. I'm chaos.
Chaos on steroids. Like roid-rage. Like that pro wrestler
who killed his wife and kids. Okay. Okay. Maybe not that bad.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I knooooow that the wait is part of it.
But also—it's barely waiting? I know it will all be over in a year.
My husband says a year isn't long.
My husband says a year isn't THAT long.

We've been married over eight years and it feels like a lifetime,
until someone throws a curveball, breaks my nose, and reminds me
of the first husband. Gosh—maybe a year isn't that long.

I want to blame a chemical imbalance. Wouldn't that be nice?
A neat little test and—oh my! There it is! You are 2 ml too low,
you are 50 mg too high—take this at night and you'll be fine!

But alas, alas, alas—we talked, we cried, we held each other,
and determined we are just broken people, doing our best.
But sometimes our best just doesn't look that fucking good.

Sometimes my best is cruel, and rude, and screaming,
and selfish, and bratty. And, you know what? My husband—
he’s kind of the same.

So we wait. How long? Who knows?
But it’s probably about a year.
He said a year isn’t that long.

A Boundless Place

"It was a boundless place to me and silenced, as the awful sea."

 — He touched me, so I live to know, Emily Dickinson

It’s been too long since I’ve spilled out these words that don’t really make sense to anyone but me. This is how my brain works when I’m not worried about being understood.

When I was little, a teacher or a book showed me a picture of a brain and told me that’s where my thoughts came from. That this lump of gray matter was what made me me.

But that felt wrong—because I had been in my brain since birth, and it wasn’t gray. It was magical. A garden. A woodland. Brimming with flowers and trees.

Each flower: a woman.

Some delicate. Some hardy.

Some blooming bright, others dull, mere filler foliage.

Once, I asked for a bouquet of just baby’s breath, and they said, “No one does that. Baby’s breath is filler—just the stuff between the showstoppers.”

Maybe baby’s breath is all the women I’ll never meet—because I was too focused on my own blooms. Maybe it’s the daughters I’ll never have, because I was too busy trying to bloom myself. I don’t know what baby’s breath really is. But I know it’s something special.

---

Dandelions—those scrappy, friendly weeds—are flowers too. And medicine. Always there, even in death, granting your wishes. I can see a dandelion every day. I can be blessed with her every day, no matter how long she’s been dead. I blow her seeds into the wind. I want her everywhere. Forever.

Daffodils are the first to bloom. Yellow. Cheerful. Friendly. Consistent. Arriving like clockwork, multiplied by the cold ground over winter. Ready to wipe away the frigid fears of my heart.

In Victorian times, gardenias meant innocence, purity, secret admiration. I still don’t know who she is to me—or if I’m anything to her. Just that whatever she wants to be, I want for her too.

Clover seems mundane, but look closely, and you’ll find luck beyond belief. She’s the friend who pops up in the middle of a soccer field and says, Adventure awaits.

Cornflowers—true blue, almost electric—once wild before pesticides pushed them out. She shows wildness still survives even if it's a domestic, cultivated garden.She’s the defiant streak of color in a gray, overmanaged world.

Tiger lilies. Traditionally they represent resilience and courage. But these spunky bursts of orange make wonder how they grow wild in ditches and royal gardens alike and we don't question their right to either space.

Sunflowers. Such deceit. So bright, so tall, so pretty. I felt small next to her. Ate too many sunflower seeds thinking I’d grow as big as her. But I just got the shits and a stomachache. Dwindled in her shadow. Sunflowers grow almost as big as trees. I was only going to shrink next to her.

Zinnias are multitudes. So many colors. Little yellow flowers inside flowers, petals within petals. Infinite. I have not met her. I probably won't. But I hold on to hope that the dream flower—the dream woman—exists. I don’t need to meet her. Just curl up in the yellows and pinks and reds that she is, for a moment.

Not all flowers in my mind’s garden are women.

Some flowers are just ideas.

Ivy is always moving. Creeping, climbing fences toward new places.

Daisies are childhood. White and bright—not yet soiled… but getting there. Always cut down too quick for a cheap bouquet.

Lotus is sobriety. A flower that floats above the dark depths that would drown most. But not her. She floats.

Lavender: the soothing comfort of God. The sweet rest and relief I find in communion with her.

Honeysuckle: that silly way nature teaches you joy. Like when someone shows you how to pull the stigma out a honeysuckle and suck out the nectar.

Allegedly, marigolds deter pests in a garden. Plant them to keep out squirrels, bugs, deer. I plant them to guard against society’s parasites: the computer, the news, the rat race, the grief of consumerism. 

(Could I be more than what I buy and own? I hope so.)

Tulips are tulips. Two lips.

Women on women.

How all women have two sets of lips.

I have two sets of lips.

How I wish to kiss our four lips—every combination possible.

Roses are just writing. The process. A rose by any other name, right, Shakespeare? Smells sweet—but why did he forget the thorns?

Magnolia is sad womanhood. A flower—but on a tree. Doesn’t all female sadness stem from the branch of a man?

Iris is angry womanhood. Persephone, splitting her time between worlds. The seething underneath, the smiling surface.

I don’t have a flower for happy womanhood.

Maybe baby’s breath could be that.

Little moments between sadness and rage that keep you going.

I haven’t seen happy womanhood—but I choose to believe in it.

---

Back to the women. My women. My flowers.

My mom is a violet.

An African violet, really.

Always on the windowsill.

The only plant she couldn’t kill.

Blooming purple in desert-dry dirt she didn't water for weeks.

I, naturally, the opposite.

Fuchsia. My favorite finicky flower. Dangling in baskets, wilted by single touch.

My grandmother? Forget-me-nots.

Because I forgot her—until the end.

Yet when she died, I got a little box with forget-me-nots on the lid.

What I couldn’t do for her in life, I’ll do in death.

I won't forget. I won't forget.

And most recently, Aunt Becky.

Pansies.

I knew so little of her growing up, except that she loved pansies, her sorority, cats, and Godiva chocolate.

And aside from the sorority—if I replace that with chosen sisterhood—she and I were the same.

Pansies aren’t just her sorority flower. They’re pretty winter blooms. Hardy and pretty well into November, when she was born.

It took me a long time to realize fuchsia, pansies, and violets were all purple.

That maybe we weren’t so fucking different after all.

It took a lot of death to see what my brain had already visualized in the garden of my mind.

---

I guess my grandfather was a redwood—tall, steady, rooted, too big, too much. Blending with the forget-me-not blue to make us purple. I didn’t plan it. It’s just how my brain sees it.

Yes, men are trees.

Sheltering shade in the heat. Building blocks for homes. But trees can also block the sun. Drain the water. Wither any flower too close. 

I’ve seen it happen...

A willow looks inviting—curtains of green, soft and flexible, a place to hide. But the slightest breeze turns those branches into whips. They cut you to the ground.

A dogwood—flowering, thorned—man and woman both. Beauty with an edge. Not a crucifix to me, but I believe a dogwood would sacrifice. Would protect. Would bloom enough to remind you of beauty, but never without defense.

Pines? I can’t stand them. Good for Christmas, maybe, but only for a month. After that they’re prickly, messy, shedding needles that stab bare feet. Hug one, and you walk away sticky with sap, carrying the dirt of everything it touched. Their best contribution is death—for decoration, then disposal. Somehow, my pine, still lives and sullies the world next to a dump where he belongs.

But a walnut tree—its nuts like little brains—feeds you. Hard, bitter, useful. Put a few in brownies: practical sweetness, crunchy wisdom. A walnut isn’t flashy, but it lasts. That’s worth planting.

---

Yes. My mind has been a boundless place of flowers and trees.

You’d think infinite beauty could salve a soul—but it doesn’t.

It is lonely.

It is silenced as the awful sea.

It is people-less, no matter how many people or ideas it holds.

It’s all, in the end, just metaphor.

It's just plants I can't touch.

And there are so many more…

More to bloom, grow, wilt, die.

Oak trees, azaleas, orchids, orange trees, bluebells, hostas, black-eyed Susans—so many I don’t know yet.

If you need me, I will be trapped in the center of a boundless garden. Never found. It would be cool if you tried though. I think I left a bread crumb trail.

Perhaps that wet, gray, wriggling lump—seven pounds in formaldehyde—is what they meant by "brain." Maybe that's a better brain.

But this is mine.

Purple-streaked, flower-strewn, tree-wild, and terribly quiet.

A garden.

A forest.

A boundless place.

Silenced as the awful sea.

Emily Dickinson saw the garden too.

Please, please, please dearest. Tell me your favorite flower. Maybe I can't have you in real life, but I have a whole plot ready to plant you in my mind.

just another weepy bitch who needs to be benched.

Can you believe they called me heartless,
compressed into the confines
of actions and reactions they demanded—
as if, at my core, I have and will always
perform to their bespoke specifications?

When I cry, when I am sad, it’s an overreaction—
just beyond the limits they wanted to see.
So I shut the fuck up
and become heartless again.

can i be like Sunday?

do you think God tires?
sighs—wants a last drag of a cigarette—
as requests pile in:

protect me, help me, watch over me;
take care of this, take care of that.
even “where are my keys?”—
people pray for their car keys.

imagine billions of wants landing daily—
she must be exhausted. why do i feel
dried, cakey, used, with only a handful of tasks?
unlike God, i’ll die and never again
hear an ask.

i don’t so much fear dying
as i fear living on.
even God took Sunday—
one day off from the mess she made.

when no one else is left

were you close?
                             no.

  but that’s not the point.
we were getting closer.

  that’s not the point either.
it’s that no one else is left—

 a last meal
i didn’t know was my last,
didn’t know it wouldn’t last.

now i’m losing teeth, gums inflamed,

 cause i can’t let go,
not brushing or flossing away
 the last little bits,
the plaque that clings.

i know, i know—

 you can’t hold on to the past
that long—

  it'll decay you to
    just a cavity.

and no one loves a hole.

no flinch

plant her in the shale mountain,
drown her in the black river.
a purebred is prized,
but a beaten mutt obeys—

till marrow runs dry,
till acid hollows the gut.
she would obey too.

nadir

My biggest fear is that you’ll become as demanding, overbearing, sick, accusatory, and angry as my ex-husband. Worse still: that if you do, it will be because I made you that way—a metastasis that consumes others until they are unrecognizable. Sometimes I catch myself praying you’d die so I could be alone and no longer hurt anyone. Other times I tell myself the truth is crueller — I don’t change anyone; I only make them feel safe enough to strip down to what was always there.

sweet potato memories

It is saved in a box—

everything I've been sent.
Little snapshots of you,
your hands, the times.

I haven't reread them.

It stays in the box
until I die. Who knows
what happens then.
I guess trashed.
I don't know.
Maybe read—
then trashed?

But then I read a book,
letters between cousins
transcribed, placed in watch-tick order,
an editor's preface. Little intros
before key times, bound
and sold. Profit made
on these precious
sweet-potato memories. We—
cousins—you and I—
we don't appreciate the past anymore
'cause we're all dead.
Shame those cousins couldn't see it happen—
their friendship is a bestseller.

I'd think you and I are a bestseller,
friendship too. It just took time.

mountain mama

This must be how snakes feel just after shedding their old skins. All that itchiness from before—cracked, dry, peeling away—and underneath, I was soft, pale, fresh to the world. Tender as a baby’s fontanel.

It was there. We met halfway in the parking lot. Not really. Stick with me—this is a rough and clunky metaphor. We met halfway in a parking lot like divorced parents handing off the kid.

You, too, had shed the old skin. Your belly was soft, tender, pink. Tiny blood vessels coursed below.

It was here you said, “This is the only time I ever really talk to you. When I’m on this truth-serum stuff.”

It was the truth. Then you asked me where I wanted to move. But I couldn’t name a place. Then you grew stern: “In the future, when you are old and can live anywhere before you die, look around. What does that look like?”

I saw trees. Forests. Maybe mountains. Not too big a city. Maybe a medium-sized town. But with culture—civic theater, an orchestra.

“You find that in a college town. Have you been to West Virginia? Driven where Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia meet? There’s Huntington, West Virginia. Marshall University is there.”

I closed my eyes and imagined the geographical threesome. “Yes! I have!”

I recounted a trip to West Virginia. To see an Ani DiFranco show with my best friend—the one now dead. We drove through the mountains. Stopped on a peak to watch stars. Got tattoos before the show. That one. On my hip. You know?

Now we—you and I—our bare, new snake-bellies were touching. So smooth, our skin now. Not rough and tough, not hurting each other anymore.

You said, “You know it’s cheap to live there? We could buy a house in cash. One you’ll never need to make a mortgage payment on when I die. The leftover from the sale of our current place... go on a nice trip, and the rest in savings.”

Yessssssss. Yessssssssssss.

This is a place our new skins can breathe until they get too tight and itchy again someday.

i should be banned from female sports social media

barefoot players,
shorts riding high—
uniforms with cheeks
dripping out the bottom
and a jersey.

arms cinched around teammates,
hands grazing low on stomachs,
touches held
a beat too long—
posed,
curated,
for the feed.

their toes flex,
soles grip the glossed blue court,
arches rising—
a choreography
made for scrolling.

i don’t want,
but i want,
this heat climbing my chest.

what’s it like
in the locker room—
wet hair dripping down jerseys,
towels snapping?
on the bus, campus to campus,
knees pressed together,
music loud, dancing
in their seats?

after a win,
Gatorade splashed down bare backs,
sugar running sticky along spines,
the air sharp with citrus,
their laughter cracking wide.

ladies, ladies, ladies,
i’m rooting for you—
are you rooting for me?

Hermit Year (Almost Over)

Today I wore a necklace—

yellow dried flowers, resin

set on shell, a choker

I found at a thrift store

eleven years ago—

a lifetime ago.

I left my husband,

comatose in bed,

to see Billy Joel in Chicago

with his friend—

a woman.

I didn’t think twice

when we stopped at the thrift store.

I bought this necklace.

We went to the concert,

rode the L there and back,

fell asleep side by side

on her couch,

season two of Orange Is the New Black

spooling through the night

until Netflix asked:

Are you still there?

We weren’t.

I had already moved on—

to a new husband, new house,

new job, new life—

still wearing the necklace.

Everyone talks about five-year plans,

about goals. I never had the chance

to tell her I did those things

we dreamed about that night.

Cause divorce always ends

conversations with his friends.

And now, as the wheel turns again,

the gears grinding beneath my feet,

I see the house that was never quite right,

the coworkers I liked well enough,

the streets I never liked to drive—

and I can say goodbye, goodbye,

knowing I’ll land gracefully,

wearing the years

around my neck

like gold.

Birthday Card

I’m glad I got a birthday card.

Some years I don’t.

And Gandhi said, "Be the change you

wish to see in the world."

The golden rule: "Treat others

how you want to be treated."

But neither mentions—

it doesn’t guarantee a thing for you,

only for everyone else.

So I write birthdays in my planner,

a reminder a week ahead.

I’m grateful someone

will always remember yours,

even in the years

no one remembers mine.

But not this year.

This year a card arrived early.

And I felt what you must feel

when my envelope lands

in your mailbox—

every year.

2nd amendment

my friend eddy was a park ranger
he said you can take down any game in north america
with a .22.

that’s why you need to buy one,
buy shells, and we’ll go
to the gun range.

i’ll teach you how to shoot,
because someday i won’t be around,
and that gun can take down
a rapist,
or a bear.

i think i could
be at peace with dying
if you can shoot.

and when i’m in hell,
i’ll be waiting at the gate
to welcome any bastard
you send my way.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

I once dreamed of endless possibilities

unfolding after you were gone.

Now I fear the boundless unknown—

fear who I might become

without you.

So I cling to this now,

this tender now,

and press the future away.

I don’t know

if any possibility

is as good

as right now.

Remember the one and only time we met in person? Your feet hurt from your wedge sandals, and you asked if I had something like white Keds you could borrow for a walk. I said I did. But when you saw they were red knockoffs, you said they didn’t go with your outfit—so you suffered on platforms, walking beside me for five blocks.

Can you keep a secret?

It begins with shoes.

When I was in kindergarten

I had a favorite pair—

white knockoff Keds

with Rudolph painted on

in cheap craft paint,

probably from a church sale.

I wore them nearly every day.

No one said anything.

Not when they were out of season,

not in the rain,

not when my toes bunched

painfully at the tips.

Then one morning

they hurt too much to wear.

We bought replacements that day.

I cried and cried.

Who could have guessed

a child would outgrow her shoes?

If an adult had intervened,

I might have worn them

just three weeks—Christmas only.

Instead, my pinky toes still curl

like lotus feet, bound

to the shape of those shoes.

And you—

like them, I loved you too long,

until the hurt made me

discard you at once.

Still, I carry you:

the spark of what once fit.

You are a pinky toe

curled in 

sarcasm chasm

“I wish I had gotten to know your mom more.”

I want to retort, “Yeah, what a shame for you.

My mom died three months after we married.”

Because I use hurtful humor

to look stronger than I am.

But I don’t—because that response

came to me five hours later.

Instead, I cry. You say, “You look

just like her.” I know. As I get older,

I see her in the mirror more every day.

It makes me wish she could see me now.

I wish you had gotten to know her more, too.

the difference between a weapon and a tool

What’s happenin’, captain, when you feelin’ low?
you said, you didn't believe how evil people can be
until you’d seen it for yourself—
you know cutting someone’s head clean off
isn’t an easy task, though easier
the second time around. but that was then—
yesterday, you bought a chainsaw,
twenty-inch, from Home Depot, good deal,
fits all your batteries,
any cord you’ve got will work.
a bargain—lifetime guarantee.
just what you need.
be here Sunday.
isn't that nice?

overflow.

he wants another dog—
    "pick a puppy from the pound.
    it’s overflowing;
    these dogs won’t last forever."

i want to return
to that first year
when everything he said
sounded right—
yes dripped from my mouth
like the faucet
due to be replaced next week.

he doesn’t want
the love—the tails in our home—
to shrink.
i don’t want to become
the sour woman
i was warned i’d grow into.

still, maybe a puppy—
small, brown,
to keep me company
after he dies.
i already have a few names
in mind—

what is a home, if not overflowing?

echo

reality never mattered.
i am what you think i am.
i become what you say.

Do the worms that writhe from the flooded soil know they escape drowning only to be crushed on the pavement?

He calls me a good mom,
a good wife, a good employee,
a good girl. I smile, ask
for my gold star, my cookie.
Tonight, I lay a thick,
juicy steak on the table.

Why wouldn't I be obsessed with periods?

Why wouldn’t I be obsessed—with bleeding, counting, enduring?

The average woman bleeds 3,500 days—nearly ten years, about 450 cycles—from first period to menopause.

Am I average? I hope so.

Every month my body reminds me what it means to endure. 

Shows me what flows within. What the mortician will one day drain.

I’ve bled. I will keep bleeding. 

Longer than I’ve loved anyone. Longer than anyone has ever loved me.

Time moves painfully slow in the moment but flies by in hindsight.