So much of writing is reading, researching. This week, I've been poring over my own archives as I cobble together an outline for the next book. My own archives include twenty-one years of journaling--not straight through, not always consistently, but there is something to show for every year between then and now and that is something. I've done this before--going back and perusing. But never all the way through. Never in this place in time, and so it feels all new again. And alongside all the journaling are poems, which at times reveal more than we intend. What was once an amusing exercise now feels notably more emotional. To read back through all of these versions of self, to walk the path while knowing where it goes(or where it doesn't)...I am overwhelmed with what remained and what changed. All of it. I am both embarassed and intrigued by my youth--my rambling telling of it, how some things were given play-by-play and some were too full to recount it. Instead, I would j...

Snow is falling. The radar is a just-bloomed bruise stretching backwards from here to Indiana. The precipitation is not the slow and drifting romance of a meandering snowfall, but much faster--almost reading like rain through the window. I can hear the tiny click-click of ice mixed in hitting. A sky of bad reception. This is the kind of snow that falls to build and build fast. I'm sitting and typing with my coffee, light therapy blaring, and a picture of young me open on the desktop. I am six or seven in the photo--bangs of my Dorothy Hamill haircut in my eyes, scrawny legs jutting from light blue shorts. I am emerging from a kid ride in the amusement park--giant yellow and blue sandbags hang on either side of me. I vaguely remember the maze of heaviness, each one swinging slow and nudging you in different directions. I have just finished saying something, or I'm about to speak, mouth almost open and one small hand poised outward. I'm wearing a white tshirt and a giant pla...

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...

Oh my heart is both so heavy and light. Finally emerging from the fog of a 2 day migraine and back at my desk doing the final adjustments on the book. This is where I am feeling both free and sad. Once again the word bittersweet feels necessary. The pit of me is such a hodge podge of things. There is relief and pride, there is fear and something else I can only refer to as a sharp sadness. I've always had a complicated relationship with goodbyes. Finishing the book feels like one, whether I meant it to or not. It does. I've spent hours and hours with these poems. I've felt both anger and love for them at times. Never have I felt so connected to a body of work. There's the feeling of saying what I needed to say and also barely denting the surface. I didn't expect to feel so emotional about it. But here I am with tears in my eyes, proud and afraid and brave. Writing this book pulled me through the remainder of this bizarre year. Writing it put to rest what stayed fit...

My labor of love is rounding its final few corners. I say this with a mix of pride and peace. I've worked hard, harder than I've ever worked on a collection of writing before. I can say that and mean it. Be it maturity or timing, I've discovered a new love and understanding when it comes to the page. I suppose I have this year to thank for some of that growth. What a strange time to be living. I think certain personal decisions and energies are palpable to others, whether we mean them to be or not. Kind of like how one shitty attitude can dull a room in record time. Those close to me have noticed something mended--as if writing and I took a long, lush walk sometime over the summer and squashed some shit being avoided for much too long. In the past I've likened my connection to my work as that of a bad lover--erratic, intense, hot and cold and never sure. I simply don't feel that way anymore. I don't want to love anything in a harmful way, especially myself. I ...