I am You.

Last week was your birthday but I tried not to think about it. I didn’t want to pause my day and think about you because I was enjoying my family. But the next day I stood in the shower beneath a steady stream of water and the thought occurred to me that I’d not let

The Flippancy of Love

My love once burned  with the intensity of a thousand suns, white dress and golden ring adorned. The passion fanned to flame, but it’d been easy to feign,  so I let it shrink to nothing,  disappear, like a balloon lost in the atmosphere. And you asked if I was willing to  touch the flame, risk

A Love of My Own

“The clouds parted over her,” he’d tell in his southern gentleman’s drawl. “Nothing could be clearer, as she was the one I was meant to marry.”     This story was like a banner over my childhood—my father’s insistence on love at first sight and destinies we hardly choose for ourselves. I suppose I expected my own

It’s Okay to Change

Recently I read a meme posted by a conservative homeschool site. It had a picture of a child scribbling happily in the background and said in sweet curly letters, “Remember: Your worst day at home is still better than their best day in school.” Homeschool mothers chimed in, grateful for the encouragement. Last year I

Memory

Figs dripped from the limb,  plump and purple royalty. Clusters of majesty. But I was the true queen, Perched on the shoulder of my grandfather, Reaching towards the tip top, Swatting the fuzzy skin until several detached And fell to the earth. Bursting like a balloon filled with syrup,  The fruit is a color I