I Should Know. I Grew Up With Them. — Amy sends me another video of her new obsession. The Instagram reel shows a gorgeous woman, heavily filtered, making tea, baking bread, pulling weeds from her garden, hugging her three kids, and kissing her husband when he got home. Amy loves these videos. Wants those domestic comforts more than anything…

When Trauma Masks as Toxic Masculinity — “Not another sad white boy” she lobbed this across the table when I said I’d made a friend at the museum. Two of the women I had joined for lunch chuckled with her. It’s true, babes. I collect sad white boys because I collect sad humans. (Mostly other creatives.) …

On Finding Joy in Unexpected Places — “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” -Heraclitus There was a lemon tree in the corner of my old yard. Came as a scraggly gift from a stranger who lived two blocks over from my old…

April 11, 2011. I’ve biked two towns over on a stolen sense of adventure. The wind shoves my hair into my eyes as I pretend I’m riding a galloping horse. Homes get further and further apart. My phone is in my dorm room, currently being blown up, but I feel…

There’s A Difference. — I’m constantly in awe of good parents. Do you know how much work it takes to be a good parent? Anyone with a working uterus can birth a child, and you can foster/adopt with the right criteria. But being a good parent? In this day and age? The balls on…

Until You Make Peace With Them — My lungs wake me with a gasp in the morning at least twice a year, and even before coronavirus, that was an unpleasant sensation. I was never told that no matter how much sleep feels like death, I am not dying. …

Understanding This Oft-Misunderstood Advice As a Baby Writer — I get *a lot* of writing advice that I don’t follow. Good and bad. Call it ignorance. Call it bad manners. Call it whatever you want. I just don’t follow it. “Find your niche” was one of them. What can I say? I’m a decent storyteller but an excellent poet…

On closure and cassette tapes — In September 2012, I purchased a portable cassette player. From a dinky thrift store that smelled heavily of cigarette smoke and a sweet, middle-aged woman who questioned why this gangly teenager had cassette tapes in that day and age. The player had served its purpose, was outdated. Perhaps it did…

I want to dwell in a new land. A country that’s deeply flawed and owns its flaws. A land that acknowledges the wounds and doesn’t bury mass trauma in unmarked graves. I want a country that reveres those who remember and teach. I want a country that weeps with the…