Categories
Current Events family Poems Poetry Uncategorized

Self-Care

In the spiraling modernity of a wired and connected world the influencers peer out of their square boxes. Against a pink or beige or golden background, they all share the same message.

Self-care. A modern woman practices a self-care routine.

The influencer will preach with the utmost sincerity. She is a trend setting prophet, and her bible is whatever pastel colored bottle has paid enough to grace her screen today.

The modern woman, her hair in a bun that’s perched atop her head, or in a day old sweatshirt that smells faintly of infant piss or vomit (or both) nods.

Self-care. She must find herself a self care routine.

But time is fleeting. How can one practice self care in the midst of a thousand daily chores that triple the minute one gets missed? Especially if the modern woman is expected to work, cook, clean, and perfectly parent at every god-damn minute of every single day.

Modernity is a dream

A beautiful one, sold in 10 second chunks of neutral colored smiles.

In reality, it’s profits for clicks. The capitalization of consumption.

And yet, still we scroll.

For self-care purposes, of course.

Categories
Current Events family Poems Poetry

Changeling

My dear,

You were never meant to pick up the pieces of a life cut too short.

It is the cruelty of existence that requires you to soldier on. It is not God’s will, it is not fate. It is…happenstance. And you have met it with wide eyed courage.

You must feel forgotten. Overlooked and overwhelmed. Angry at the world or God or the Universe for leaving you behind.

Guilty for your anger. Guilty for your rage. Guilty for all the roiling emotions that ebb and flow with the circadian rhythm of the day.

Because you’re the one who stayed.

My dear, I see you. I see your youth. I see your bright soul alight with childish wonder.

I see how it’s dimmed now that you can no longer explore the vast expanse of this incandescent world with the man you love.

You’re a changeling. Alone in the bizarre shadow called Earth now stripped of light.

But please remember…

Grief is not attached to morality.

Grief simply is.

You will feel knives of anger, shards of hatred, and moments of spite. You will feel sparks of joy, bubbles of love, and waves of compassion. And all this will barrage you in staccato rhymes of confusion.

Because you were left behind.

But my dear, you are not forgotten. Though it may seem that way.

You were left behind. But we are by your side.

Categories
Current Events family Poems Poetry

15 Years

She was born in the quiet hush of a snowstorm. Fifteen years later, there’s nothing quiet about her.

She’s as fierce as a tsunami and loud as a tornado.

Snow shrinks before the spring, and she, she is the raging river that’s left behind.

Categories
family parenting Poems Poetry

Gray Matter

What will the memories of this past year be? Perhaps, one of the hardest years of my life.

Will they be filled with the rose colored tinge of nostalgia, like the pain of childbirth that time and contentment erase?

Or will they darken the day, coming in as sharp, stinging nettles in the surprise of their remembrance?

Categories
Current Events Education family Haiku Poems Poetry

College

It’s easy to think

I’m abstract terms about “struggle”

But much harder

When your child is hundreds of miles away

And crying on the phone

Categories
Current Events family Haiku parenting Poems Poetry

Back

There are times in life

When the world spins around you

And though you move slow

Time is relentless

And, despite your best efforts to catch it

Time falls through your fingers like sand

It’s been a minute

Established routines were lost

To time’s onslaught

Yet, the spinning slowed

And suddenly Autumn was in the air.

As summer dwindles,

I can think clearly

Categories
Climate family Haiku parenting Poems Poetry

When Spring Came to Fall

A breeze has begun.

Listless still, but cold and crisp

It harbors the fall.

and the end of an old cycle

But, underneath the wind

A budding laugh grows

And she awakens

Like a new spring

Categories
Current Events family Poems Poetry

Summer Clean up

The intangible weight of life

Is laden with excess woes

But made light of strife

When unburdened from a closet of clothes.

Categories
family Haiku parenting Poetry

Nostalgia

Looking through photos

Brings a honeyed nostalgia

That’s soured with fear

What if I remember

Only the picture? And not

The sweetness of the moment?

Categories
family Haiku parenting Poems Poetry

Graduation

How do I begin?

You had to grow up too soon.

You were the strong one

The oldest kiddo

With the most responsibility

As you celebrate this day

I think that the hardest times

Are finally behind