Last week, when her heart stopped, she vanished into the widespread, became imperceptible,  indistinct.   And yet, just before she left, she was a thousand particulars— audible, specific:   the excitement she felt about the stall she’d booked  for us writers at the Christmas market, about the poster I made featuring our names  for others to find us amid the crowd,  about the introduction she’d make between the owner and me, rejoicing in the chance  of a new friendship,    the

When I think about having it all, I think of my big sister planting a fig tree in her garden. I see her there, in my head— knees in the dirt, hair tracing her face in arched streams like a water sprinkler, hands patting the soil while Poppy, her pup, digs chaos in the mud.   I remember her saying, ‘To make it bloom, you must keep its roots in check, press them into the curve of a pot.’   Unfettered, the tree will squander itself on leaves, wood reaching farther than sweetness

Light came through the window above the sink, pale and clean. The city below was hushed by glass and the weight of sleep. On the sill, a tangle of ivy and wilting basil caught the wind, their leaves trembling faintly in the draft. I watched the street fill with its usual delivery vans, cyclists weaving between cars, and a woman in a yellow coat hurrying her child across the intersection. Near them, other kids clustered by the school gates, some chasing each other around a ben

‘Heal, heal’, they say, but how long does it take a forest to recover from wildfire? 80 years and longer. Meanwhile, the forest floor...

Like green hands blest, they grow twig to seedling in the dying hedge of the depressed, and with the sun at their backs, cup the light on their shoulders and convey it to strangers on the edge, yet like a shadow that never leaves, block the light from entering their kindreds’ blue chests with their fists and lust for incest. The Poet Magazine, August 2022

This man’s polarity reminds me of Ted Bundy—the man who killed women, but saved a toddler from drowning and volunteered at a suicide...