You say you want to know, that a god should put all their stuff behind those eyes, all your heaven, a whole sun —plasmatic and self-consuming— attached in one weird head.
Balancing; Another Heatwave; Stake Out; In the Glitter Pattern
Dirt is Soil; Friend Request; Musician at the Reunion; Rendezvous; The End of Summer
You don’t even have a lawn,
yet you present yourself, a violin in one
hand, bow in the other, head back in
song, the only who of us who’s free.
Sport of Blood Unseen
You loved terrible movies, glittering with violence and shallow story-lines. Watching those movies on Saturdays after cleaning the house were some of the most peaceful times we spent together.
Neil Aldridge, Sr.
When I learned my wife had lost her mother, I assumed she, too, had been chasing impossible expectations.
Escapes: A Literary Autobiography
When I was ten, my father began bringing me and my brother to the public library on Tuesday nights. I’d run my fingers along each of the chapter books’ rainbow spines, struggling to decide which books to bring home that week.
Dreams of Jack Burney; The Dream; We Are Still Here; Prairie Wind; She Waits
Kiss those hands Your prose stained hands
We breastfeed and suckle