The poem I tried to write the other day was a slight meditation on the word soon. It began with the dog, shaking his floppy ears and the jangle of his collar. Soon, he would want to be fed and walked and played with. Soon, I would have to get ready for work. Whether we…
Category: Relationships
Thoughts and Readings on Being in a Healthy Relationship
The Affair
The other morning, instead of scrolling Twitter and Facebook and reading the news – or more accurately, doing less of those things – I spent my time revising poems and researching the submission guidelines of a few journals. I still didn’t hit submit, but this was a step. I have continued to add to my…
The Long and Short of My Tiny Anxieties
I get anxious about things. Not super anxious, but anxious. I get anxious about going to new places or not being on time. I get anxious about leaving. I get anxious about trying things I haven’t done before or things I’m not good at (dancing, golf, roller skating) – especially if people are watching. I…
Chemistry and Stars
The text conversation began … “I wanted to match with you first and tell you that your first date description gave me a little bit of the goosebumps because it’s been a while since I’ve had that kind of a first date.” Over the July 4th holiday weekend we went out. We had a good…
June 16, 2018
Four years ago I went on a first date that ended up changing the course of what I consider to be my second adult life. I suppose if I take a butterfly effect view of life, I could argue that I’ve gone on lots of first dates that changed the course of my life –…
A Bucket Full of Knots
Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself – soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly,…
Lost and Found
I am embarrassingly late to the podcast craze. Enough so that I think it may have peaked and started to fizzle a few years ago. I hadn’t ever listened to one until a few months ago when I started listening to Hidden Brain. I don’t know, I think I felt somewhat above them – a…
Choice, Autonomy, the Self, and Others
I had a dream that I kept waking from and coming back to – or at least I felt like I kept coming back to. I was involved with someone. I couldn’t picture her, so it wasn’t anyone specific. She wanted to have cosmetic surgery (not corrective, per se) and I was stuck between wanting…
Slow Walk to the Edge of Admission
Friday Morning
During one of my earlier quiet phases – one of those one- or two-week unintentional hiatuses from writing when I wasn’t sure what the point was or just felt tired and confused
Purpose Like a Ham Sandwich
There’s no way I can get this right. Quite literally, no way. So instead, I get up and water the plants. That’s how I’m beginning a poem of the same title. It won’t go very far – so few of them do. Already, I’ve walked away from the poem like a half-eaten sandwich. From a…
Not Enough People and All that I Need
I say in lectures in 1996 that fifty percent or more of American marriages go bust because most of us no longer have extended families. When you marry somebody now, all you get is one person. I say when couples fight, it isn’t about money or sex or power. What they’re really saying is, “You’re…
One man in his time…
A long and lean woman stood naked in the doorway. The faint light from the kitchen outlined her silhouette casting the rest of her in shadow – almost spectral in the 3am night just before she came back to bed. Later, this same woman, someone I once dated, was with me as I submitted fake…