I am 38 weeks pregnant today. I am tired. A fatigue that almost feels exquisite, boasting its own radial warmth. A tired that insomnia still deems as brittle seed pod beneath its anchor. When there isn’t sleep, I read. A steady shift of one leaning tower(to-read) to a new, equally crooked stack(read). I keep finding new things to clean and sort and organize around our home. That nesting instinct is sewn into muscle. Chris pleads with me to slow down but it’s incredibly difficult to fight the urge. So, I stack the freezer with meals for after her arrival. I rearrange every closet, donate a mountain of irrelevants. When confined to my desk for work, I switch my focus—gutting my email inbox, abolishing archives and organizing poem drafts, publishing submissions. It’s fascinating—this innate craving for order and preparation wherever I can get it. In awe. This body, goddamn. I thought I knew her. I thought lifelong athletics taught me all I needed to know about her limits and resilience.

Little one, We are weeks, if not days, from meeting. Weeks at most, which feels so wild to say. This pregnancy has felt both endless and instant. Here we are, at the end of the first part of our forever adventure. Words feel ridiculous right now--how do I do the process justice? How do I express every corner of it--the pure weather of feeling that destroyed and built me over and over again? How do I explain how deceitful the mirror felt, how every single day I surrendered. Even on the days that I refused to. Your grandfather says I've changed. He makes a point to mention it separately from anything else we are discussing, usually waiting until the end of a phone call to bring it up. He states it with a smile. When I want to know how, he doesn't have the words for it either. Where are all the words for these things going? The other day I told a close friend about your two vessel cord--how we had to go to the high risk unit for extra monitoring to make sure you were growing. I

taken back when i could still glimpse my feet Officially in the home stretch of growing a brand new human being. What a challenging, gorgeous, humbling adventure. Every emotion, named or otherwise, has left its mark on me. I have felt more power than I thought possible. I have been twisted in opposite directions by grief, by love. By fear. By a wild belief, so true that it stunned me--that I have always been more capable than I ever allowed myself to believe. Already my daughter is teaching me so much. Already I am so, so honored to be her mother.

Super honored to have a poem in Muzzle Magazine. Muzzle has been a publication goal of mine for years, so this is a big one for me personally. click here to read my poem in muzzle magazine, fall 2021 I also have a new poem in the anthology "Made of Rust and Glass: Midwest Literary Fiction Vol 1." available for purchase here

Little one, After weeks upon weeks of keeping quiet, of writing letters to you in saved word documents, I can finally acknowledge you here. You were the hardest secret I've ever had to keep. At first you were only a word, a confirmation, a photo I sent to your father while he was still at work. I was in shock and couldn't imagine waiting a second longer, let alone take the time to find some cutesy way to break the news. The moment of you was immediate, insistent. There was the agony of waiting for the first appointment, to finally see you. Everything told me you were there, but I still wasn't sure until I saw you, a tiny gummy bear on the screen. I could've stared at you all day. Forgive us both for laughing at one of your still photos that looked exactly like a tiny dinosaur. Don't worry--we're saving it. I'll show you someday. We told our families about you immediately after. The love and support felt extremely necessary to have around us. We didn'

I think the brief sweet spot of travel is coming to an end. At least for now. Things have been absurdly busy since returning from vacation. I am super stoked to share that I've had a poem accepted to Muzzle for this fall, which was a massive goal of mine this summer. I've started doing some editing work on the side, and there is an oppotunity to release another collection sooner rather than later. I'm so endlessly thankful to be a writer. More big(bigger, biggest?) news coming in the not-distant future. For now it's back to all sorts of grinds. Here's to momentum. Oh and nature. Here's to nature as well because she's been knocking my socks off.