Category: Non-Fiction Works
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Healing is Mine
I don’t want to make my healing about you, so I do my best to forget. But five years is a long time and I find your sour words appearing while Iwash dishes. Blue suds on my hands, the words, “You needed that.” Foaming fromyour mouth. You flounder off of me, a place you weren’t…
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Remember When
Seventh Grade We are embarking on a winter weeklong retreat for school. Our teacherstucking our permission slips into their pockets as we pile onto the three-hourlong bus ride. Jeremy. The boy with the shaggy hair, coffee brown eyes, beetling brows, and black Etnies shoes. Wetraded shoes one day in the hall at school. Him in…
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Spring Solace
I walk to local park near my apartment. I settle in, sinking into the grass, feeling enough distance from others that I peel my mask off. I inhale the sweet smell of daisy weeds scattered beside my blanket. The earthy, homey smell of soil beneath my bones. Doesn’t the smell of the seasons transport you…
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Witherbloom
I spent a decade under someone else’s thumb. The finger changed hands over the years, but there I remained, trying to crawl out of the deep fingerprint lines that had become my permanent residence. I spent years being told that I was not enough, that how I dressed was a tease to other men, that…
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The Fear and Practice Connection
Practice is hard. Finding the inspiration and humbling yourself enough to acknowledge the need for practice, ironically, takes practice. This is a lesson that has taken my whole life to learn and I am still learning today. To practice means to fight fear, to shove those “What-ifs” into the broom closet, their long toenails poking…
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Clifford
I pull him from my closet. I promise I didn’t forget him, he has been intentionally preserved on a wooden hanger. When my grandpa passed, my dad picked his checkered red flannel and Carhartt suspenders for me to keep. They smell of him. I asked my mom how long the scent of him would linger…
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Mole
“If I have to lose you, I will be devastated.” I say to the small brown oval on my left forearm. Last spring my aunt who worked at a skin clinic, stopped me mid-sentence. She gasped, grabbing my arm, studying the large mole. “Oh honey, you need to get this checked out. See these edges?…
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Tangerine
My pain. I try to rename it, the chronic illness group I follow says it helps. “Your brain associates pain as a negative word and your body reacts to it.” A woman named Susan writes on Facebook. *** I share my pain with him, my safe place. “What should we name it?” I ask, heating…
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Blue Sunday
“We don’t have anymore tea bags, so I stewed you up a craft.” Our waitress says, setting down a clay pot of blueberry tea. And there you are. Admiring the Middle Aged man playing the saxophone. You sway, allowing the music to twist you, like a flag in the wind. Your honey eyes drip into…
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A Kaleidoscope of Thought
It’s not what they say it is. I don’t feel trapped in a gray sludge, I don’t feel like sleeping. I don’t not care, in fact I care too much. I feel almost crippled. I think as I drive. The response I am waiting for doesn’t come. I turn my phone on silent and I…
treatswords 