Grooming is a destructive stage of sexual abuse, in which a person uses deceptive (and often non-sexual) bait or pressure to lure someone into a situation where they are easier to sexually exploit against their will. Learning about grooming was vital as I struggled to piece myself back together from shreds. I couldn’t pinpoint, at…

It felt exposing to see the Nike goddess statue in her plaza home on news coverage of the Royal Jubilee because Nike, or Victoria, is the cover photo on my just-published book. The exposure was both imposter-ish and relevant; my story has nothing to do with empires, but discusses victories and tributes. I think of…

How did secrets creep up on me, unwanted? How did I wind up holding them in my basket of arms … and how do I pour them out? I meant to tell Beloved everything. But integrity seemed overstretched, like taffy gone stringy and gappy in places, laced between the fingers of two hands moving slowly…

There isn’t supposed to be anything wrong with my life, but indeed, I am altered. The sensation that I’d lost my friends and loved ones set on slow, like a glacier gouging into the yard. Undetected, gradual things shoved into my foundations underground before I knew it, without prior notice or consent from me or…

I remember when the first shock of pandemic shut-downs hit and the “quarantini” meme was popular. I enjoyed a moderate quarantini or two as well, so don’t take this as a point of shame. Quarantinis were a cute gimmick for a while until they became gaudy. Some people continued to self-medicate to take the edge…

Crisp fall wind prickles the nose, awakens the face. Draw it into your chest, savor it, release it slowly. It soothes to the core. Welcome the invigorating sensation of clearing the air. Not a man hater. In fact, my confrontation reflects the opposite. I’ll tell you why. Yes, I’ve been disappointed by men in my…

These days have me feeling like chicken little. Writing from the wringer of anxiety, I fret my peers concluding I’m losing my ever-loving … perspective. Nevertheless, let’s enjoy the ride for two minutes, if for nothing more than literary exercise. Droughts, floods, and plagues, unpredictable tides and winds are reported like as many fallen skies.…

I can’t be the first to write about this junction; a real place. Imagine sermons of the past spoken within the image here, voicing a reference, at the very least, to the steeple’s poignant position on the city map, the theme echoing on-location within the sanctuary confines. My spouse first drew my attention to the…

Hair unbound is the free spirit of wild horses, the mysterious shape of wind-waved prairie grass. I dangle hair over my infant to hear delightful peals of laughter emanating from the nose wiggling underneath. I enjoy the warmth of a friend braiding the strands; the tenderness of a child clutching and silking tresses; the stir…

Published first at joyofit.org “Yet hope lingers in our resolution tradition. Failed-resolution jokes aside, the tradition endures. Resetting the calendar symbolizes our potential to reset. Sometimes a successful woman turns back the clock. Inspiring people sustain the motivation to abandon useless habits. Renewed health brings a youthful glow. Courageous ones face the risks of calling,…

I depart to the lake. Enclosed upon the secret Lake of Timelessness a fog rests above the motionless waters, a fog steady with the airs of permanence. The lake is ridged with mountains and pines, a firm and living stone cup, protective to the point of still waters, broken vessel though it is at the…

Is life delicate? Or is life resilient? I am no master of this paradox, life. Our life is but a breath, a chaff, a breeze. Grass growing thick and velvety one day, only to crumble and disintegrate at season’s end. Yet life persists on, carries on, heals, grows, adapts, survives. Who can account for the…

Somewhere in the plains stands your basic neighborhood two story house. A wooden porch extends off the back. A vegetable garden here, a willow there in the corner where it floods now and again. There are baby rabbits, sometimes, in burrows beneath the trees. In spring, robins make their nest under the floor boards of…

A scene of tension is set.* A woman is publicly exposed. An aggressive mob gathers, challenge in their narrowed eyes and tensed shoulders. They approach the influential leader, the winner of many hearts– Jesus. And inside the crucible of this climax the narrative pauses to accommodate Jesus as he writes something in the dust with…

Prayer, a fatigued word. Draped with those wet blankets of ideas like feebleness, inaction and apathy. Prayer in 2017 brought a particularly tiresome reputation. Tragedy after tragedy, our overwhelming feeling of powerlessness rising, faithful and faithless alike knowing not where to turn but prayer alone. In response to the charge, I reflect that I’d pray…

Flip backward the calendars and replay the static-ey memories from sometime in the 80’s and 90’s. A collection of pictures, as in the kind we used to stack once developed from the entire roll of film; posed family portraits mixed among the random and mostly terrible action shots. The dated furniture and décor, strings of…

I claim the happy fortune of having spotted our townie hotdog hearse on two occasions. Someone has bolted a mastiff-sized fiberglass hotdog to the top of a hearse. The fiberglass hotdog is of quality construction. I’m convinced it is not simply an object procured by chance from some second-hand warehouse. It is shiny and new…

Something is strange about the way hurts in life corrupt me inside, later to unfurl in confusing and unexpected directions. My feelings wrap and jumble like poorly tended rope; a mess of buried ends and loops lacking purpose and order. A thread of bitterness with no discernible track or pattern to the casual glance. Picture…

Desert tender, you and I dwell in that parched scrubland of unspoken things, yielding broken things. Arid earth rends the clay into abrupt dry islands, irregular curved pucks of crumbling terra cotta, crags widening. There we dwell separate alongside the deep chasm. We are in a desolate spiritual place, a void of growth, movement, words.…

This Child, I say, we share a unique bond. My child, when I first enfold your tender body in my arms, I gaze with complete intrigue into your soft eyes and ask, “who are you, stranger from within myself!” So new that your breaths are still counted in number… you and I are sacredly wrapped…

Somebody insinuated I was racist once. I was livid. This is my story. I offer it; let it fall from my open hands. In that memory I am enraged. Anger, that surprising product of sadness and fear, like opposing fluids in a jar, whirl into a cloudy suspension. Sadness and fear whip together into a…

Within the time frame of a few weeks, my work friends decided to plan a party. Rather than have the party at the office, I invited everyone to come to my house. The week of the party, a coworker asked if they might also invite Melissa to come. She was not on the workplace email…

Years ago I was working in office with my co-worker “Melissa.” She and I were friends. Despite our friendship though, something went terribly wrong. I picked up a bad habit. You see, I had begun to arrive five minutes late to work, every day. She began to call me on it every time. Now, chronic…

This is a picture of my maternal grandmother Rosalie. Here she is standing with Shirley, Juanita, and Frances, next to a B29 airplane, the sort she worked to rivet in the effort of WWII. The fact of her name, and that she was often referred to as Rosie, gives her poignant possession of the title…