Is it okay to say what I miss? Most of it, truly. I miss getting on stage--be it a mic stand in a book store with all the seats filled, or a single spotlight up a small flight of steps in front of a fistful of musicians. Miss leaving the pages in my seat and closing my eyes finding rhythm and feeling it. There is nothing like it. The online readings serve their purpose in filling a bit of the void but it isn't the same. You know if you've lived it--to be able to let your eyes wander around the room while you listen to someone spilling their heart. To note the weather behind you as they finish speaking, to clap hard in time with others. Even the nerves surrounding it are different. I don't want to see myself while I'm reading. I want to see a small lake of faces listening. I want to be awkward and shuffle weight from left to right. I want my left hand to make shapes in the air while I say words. In person energy. I crave it like nothing else. I want to sit with my frien

swell I forgive myself for being myself, oh ye of little faith in I--for the eyes, the green ones I did not inherit, no matter how I wished for them. Forgive brain folds light and dark, their inexplicable pattern of restless city. My teeth for being slightly terrible and the sugar for ruining them. Forgive childhood’s neglect, sodas for breakfast. This mouth now paying for it. The dentist who whispers I’m sorry when he sees my tears slip sideways silent. I am cranked all the way back. Forgive. For mouthing hymns instead of singing them. Forgive the mirrors because it was never their fault. Nor winter’s fault. Nor the one who had you first or the one that has you now. Forgive our wants for their different paths, for this habit of wandering off into thick green. Be it curious or compulsive or inherited need to leave--I forgive my mother’s empty seat, a storm receding. For damning myself as a means to punish someone else. How unremarkable to suffer at one’s own hand. Forgive every doc

At the end of every gregorian calendar year, I make note of the same thing: I don't really buy into new years. I think the definitive switch from 12 to 1, to ascend from one number to next is precise and tidy enough for most people. More power to you I say. But years ago I switched from counting down to January 1st to leaning into my day of birth as a new start/new year. This isn't innovative by any means, just saying that's what works for me. I think it felt especially important for many of us to get to the end of 2020. The past 12 months have been unlike any other. I turned 39 in the midst of a pandemic, and even life back in May reads a little naive compared to present day. I remember spending the afternoon on a blanket in the sun, wearing Chris's Onyx tshirt from high school. We were cracking up at our ridiculous Mad Libs and trying to wrap our heads around what the summer ahead might look for us. December this year stood as the month in which everything caught up