Some human cells adapt to toxic stress by physically becoming other cells. Smoke enough, and tall columns become flat lung lines. Turn 16, and girl lining becomes home-in-waiting. The word for this is metaplasia. It is supposed to be temporary.
I am borne of a landscape of freckles. My mother, her father, his mother: the Williams and Shepherds, the English and Welsh. The bounty of peach farms, peace roses and quiet spirituality.
This poem was once a bird | An eagle in fact | Whose span of wing | And accurate sight | Was the stuff that legend makes.
I’m holding your drawing. It’s more of a map, really, a magic-marker rendering of your family’s redesign. Embellished stick figures rise…
Common as pennies, they mob the feeder, empty it in a day— nothing left for finches, wrens, chickadees— birds from the genus Passeridae, meaning flutterer.
These poems, (Siblings, Digging, and Reflection,) are a representation of some of the intense emotions I’ve experienced over the past few years, following the stillbirth of our first daughter, Braylie.
They say that life has a way of giving you exactly what you need when you least expect it. That when one life ends, another is born.
There are days, sometimes weeks, when you don’t even think about it. Then, one day, in front of the bathroom mirror, you face the glaring reminders. Three scars.
“Wake up! Michael’s stopped breathing. We gotta go.” The voice seems familiar, perhaps a childhood playmate’s. I cling to sleep…