Perhaps these notes will help explain the events of the past few weeks, so that not everything I have been witnessing will be lost to speculation and hearsay. Maybe I’ll be back in due time and will tear up these pages with deep embarrassment; I will cut ties with Ethan and refer him to one of my colleagues. Though, should he ever be allowed to tell his side of the story, everyone in my profession will shake their heads and use my case to warn their disciples against grotesque transgressions.

His footprints are still there to see
on the stone on the Mount of Olives
where he pushed off, like a power forward
rising to the rebound, to ascend.

Bold charcoal lines slithered across the canvas of the huntress’s blue gaze. Her fingers dipped into the inky mixture, then ran thick, twin nocturnal serpents under her blackberry-stained bottom lip and down her chin. Her framed eyes glinted with raw focus as she worked, fully immersed in the ancient custom meant to intensify deep forest vision, connecting her to the fire that bore the dark origin of this war paint and to the fierce spirit of the hunt.

time in hospitals is not linear.
the past and future lives of patients
dangle
by wires and rolling IV carts,
souls spread thin beneath bleached sheets.

Clement shivered. Rain fell heavy, filling the runnels on either side of the bridge’s supports. He surveyed his home in the dim light of the evening, reaching, feeling for the tent, his clothes and sleeping bag. His neighbors had left, fearing the predictions: the river would soon crawl up the bank and sweep everything to the bay. He looked up at the underside of a steel beam, an arm’s length from his head. The river spoke in a rush at his feet. He must leave his carved-out dirt space of a home.

Words are my enemy. Spoken. Written. It doesn’t matter. They’re out to get you. Birth certificates, applications, references, diplomas, licenses, interviews, gossip, whispers, family stories, newspapers articles, books, magazines, all of it, all of it, is just waiting to do you in. Words are a trap, a snare. They will catch you, crush you, cripple you. They push you around from the moment you’re born.

When in the rainless weeks of summer the mulch pile dried,
and worms we hooked for bait would burrow
deeper than our reaching fingers could grope,
we’d sweep with bare feet the hay fields for grasshoppers…

I received an email saying that my work account password is about to expire, but I am not sure which work account this pertains to, since we have multiple. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I am lost in a sea of passwords.

Serenity before dawn’s waking human world disrupts pristine Creation. I and my companion share psalms we read aloud, a sacred veil ensuring inner peace. With opened hearts we rise as sparks in spans of history…

The Chief Justice would not consent to die. He had felt the tremors first in his fingers, when the train had departed Niagara Falls, but dismissed the barely perceptible tingling as the motion of the locomotive over the rails. But now, the right side of his mouth began to droop, and he sought to speak but could not. He tried to lift his arm, to motion to the other gentlemen in the first-class compartment, the rocking of the train having lulled them to sleep, but it was too late.

When the old horse ‘n hay barn came down off 450 South, smoke rose for days, carried for miles. A great gray cloud come to overtake. No one thought Old Man Neeri was tethered up inside. Days later, after the coals had quit their smoldering, the authorities picked through to find the cause of the burn.

I loved my babysitter, Eileen. She ran cross-country track and strutted around bare legged in a varsity warm-up jacket. Her name was emblazoned in gold letters on the back, and there was a sneaker with wings on the sleeve.

There are those who live
between the lines of life
who once were my story
but came not to fit,
not them in mine
nor me in theirs;

The bearded old Mexican operating the levers of the yellow forklift sings, “Tomás, ooh-ooh-ooh.” He is singing to me even though my name is not Tomás – first or last. But I am a bit of a doubting Thomas. And a peeping Tom as a kid. But not a Tomás.

Hannah’s death was doubly final. Lizzie burned her, then took the whole urn with her when she left for Indiana—you don’t get any part of her, Lizzie told me.
And then Lizzie buried her.
Heaven and Earth are full of thy glory, the preacher said.
But I keep her toenails around my neck, in a locket strung on a silver chain.
Hosanna in the highest, the preacher said.
Holy shit.

“What happens after we die?” is a question that has intrigued humanity for millenniums and is perhaps the greatest enigma of all time. Of the estimated 118 billion humans that have died, zero returned with conclusive proof of an afterlife.

will we ever know ourselves as well
as we know the radish we pull from the garden bed?
know our readiness as its, as it bulges at the surface dirt
with rusty shoulders that promise spicy delight?

August 15, 1945
Betty shows me her scar. Dark purple it runs six inches down her belly. She says it’s ugly and I say it’ll fade in time.
Drove through town on my way back. Jap surrender is all over the news so people hold up two fingers for victory. It’s when I get away from the crowd.

The memory is barely a memory. The night is a wound healed over, skin knit back together until it’s almost eerily smooth—a silky stretch of scar tissue betraying its otherness. It’s flashes of light cutting through trees, hot salt on my tongue, gurneys bumping over the curb and sliding into the backs of ambulances. It’s needles stabbing flesh, hands examining every inch of me, searching for answers.

Chelsea Hartman stared out of her bedroom window, a dull ache deep within her chest. Her once vibrant world had become a monochromatic landscape, devoid of laughter and girlhood friends. Just like every morning for the past few weeks, she watched as the sun peeked through the clouds that hung over Southern California. The sudden closure of her school just as she was about to return after Spring Break marked the beginning of her isolated life.

When I was in my late teens, seven of my father’s male friends died within a year and a half. Not husbands of my mother’s women friends. These were men my father knew independent of Mom. I don’t remember him outwardly showing emotion though I’m sure he was, at the very least, sad.

This series of photographs, titled “Coastal Grey,” depicts elements of summer themes. My goal was to capture a vibrant setting and allow the viewer to realize it remains vibrant even though color is lacking.

I paint landscapes, interiors, exteriors, still life’s with figures interacting and posing for the camera displaying memorable moments with families, friends, and neighbors.

If you head downstream, there’s a waterfall that empties into a natural pool so deep that no one has found the bottom yet, which means it’s perfect for practicing the fanciest of dives and biggest of cannonballs. But it was also a great place to lazily float in large, gentle circles.