Morning Entries

Sometimes, I think you get the worst of me, but today it was clear that I have simply given you all of me. I have allowed myself to be my best and my worst in your presence and more than anything I have been more than what I knew. The better version of mothering and care and you’re the loving proof of my all. You tell me today how you wish you knew more of me. To have seen me at 7 or 13 and a glim...

The heart wants what the heart wants as though the soul has already known the destined path ahead and does not caution the human about the bumps and bruises, joys and sorrows for how can one fully understand the ecstasy that comes from love at the highest form in tandem with the duality of suffering once that love ends? our small brains would never quite understand the concept with the experience...

I have no desire for adventures in far off lands Or romantic rendezvous with men that I make up 90% of who they are while they show me a meager 10% of character that intrigues me just enough to entertain messy top lipped sessions in dark corners. And, I clench my breathes awaiting for that vibrant 10% to be unwavering past the first few hours in anticipation for weekends holed up in a bed I call m...

June is an island. And the only inhabitants are my girl and me. June is an island of anticipations and in-betweens Long days of list making and preparations for the voyage ahead. We hold each other tighter these days as death and loss has become real to her - both the loss of people and the fading of childhood she so desires to do over again - even if just the last five years she says, while we la...

Breeze of change teases me on familiar neighborhood walks The thought of being a childless mother comes often enough that we have made friends with one another now and this new relationship invites me to begin the arduous process of untethering an invisible velvet ribbon that runs from my youngest daughter and I Everywhere I turn is a subtle reminder of a magical yet tragic childhood all three of...

We darted in and out of the winding corridors,cobblestones under our feet. Yellow of lemons battles the yellow of sunshinethat fights its way through lush green cocoons. Leather sandals, thin enough for my blood to glide over generations past, as I stub my foot more times than I can keep track of. Tourists never understand: the true backdrop is in fact not the multicolored dwellings that hug the T...

I was definitely born in the right generation this time around. A glowing red society that breeds high achievers and truth seekers. Biohacking, habit stacking, and every inch of one’s day turned into a personal CV—played out like a movie in your mind. This generation feels the crunch of time on our backs. To pause means to acknowledge the dire truth: we are running against a clock. Holding our bre...

There’s a knowing that comes with age—that everything is, in fact, finite, that loss is on the other side of every joy-filled moment. Years 35, 36, 37, and 38 saw me holding my breath in anticipation for the proverbial other shoe to drop. The heavy, concave ceiling due to crash in over me any day now. And the aged Moroccan rug to be pulled out from underneath the feet I was desperately trying to p...

Help me speak up on behalf of… Every womanEvery motherEvery daughterEvery childless womb Help me speak up on behalf of the ancestors I am directly connected to,Whose blood flows through my veins, intertwined in this lifetime and those before. Dear God, allow my voice to be pure honey to the ear,Wrapping every version of me that has ever been here A healing rapture where the divine and this life co...

Truth be told—she suits you I'm 39 now, and truth is the only thing I allow to escape from my lips. So here it is—No one would ever be enough for you in the end. I saw it then, and now you are living proof of this consequential truth playing out. Here we are, post-2022.Wedding bliss—I guess it’s all but faded by now. Perhaps that’s why I’m hearing from you? Never too far out of reach,I see your ta...

There’s a certain envy that creeps in—I wish it weren’t truewhen they happen across my days,these light sprinkles of people who know very little about this type of pain. They’ve never been tied to the fences of fate,where mothers lash out and fathers forget your birthdate,or what sits in your body after all these years after being ripped from a home filled with women who swooned over you, only to...

I think I’d like to come back as a house the next go ‘round— To be cared for, treasured, and adored Tiny feet coming in and out over every door To be the backdrop of life—wide-open moments and secret, private events. Newlyweds trying on Mr. and Mrs. Roses, hydrangeas, fig trees, and an old olive out backI’m watered, pruned, and admired at Scrubbed floorboards on Saturday mornings Babies bornOld bo...

I watch youI observeThe acts of powerful siege against who you won’t dare let yourself be Lies come far too easily, for someone so young. And, there I amBiting my tongue from the sidelines I wonder how your body must feel,To be in a constant state of abandonment. I don’t understand how you wallow in it Perhaps that’s why you keep your distance—You know how quickly the two of us can smell it,Pick u...

I watch myself unravel and recoil Trying to place a name— Compunction,Shame,And at times…ignominy That uncontrollable shake the body makes involuntarily from the memories of each and every horrible mistakemadeby no other hands than the two that belong to me. Oh, yeah, all the allowing? Too many years of better judgment taking a backseat As though I don’t have full autonomy over me Somewhere in me...

I pour myself—all of my selves—onto the pages,in hopes of not bleeding unintentionally on anyone close to me. I seek out the safety of virgin-white, crisp pages,whose only dutyis to absorb the blunt force trauma of that day's scream. The pen and paper—a trusted security blanket. Except this time, it won’t be used to cushion the furniture in the moving truck,only to fly off the freeway, never to be...

The way his fingers graced the finely tuned keys pulled some kind of apparition out from underneath A hot southern summer blues of a memory—but I know it didn’t belong to me Rattles and echoes of distant ancestors reside in my body, their blood pulsating through me,their experiences imprinted somewhere subconsciously. My mind wanders to German Jews on trains—there is a break in the tree and I can’...

When Everyone Has Gone Home Is that the hardest part? Mounds of dirt settle and sink back into the earth. Gravestones gradually collect dust. Perhaps that’s the hardest part? Pieces of their lives—represented in cups, jeans, and trophies— All sold off,Given away to charity,The last bits rummaged through on the curbside of the old house. Surely, that’s the hardest part? The endless lists have all b...

My body is twisted to the left,Torso on a bolster,Head stretched out in some impossible position—Criminal for adults, but natural for babies. There is something in the smell of a yoga studioThat nearly lulls one to sleep— A drop of Far East essential oilMixed with the earthy wood floors,A tinge of sweat lingering as an afterthought. Eyes droop heavy,Lids barely open,Lashes blurring what little vis...

I allow my mind to take me through a journey that tells the story of being chosen. Some years, the thread is thick and easy to follow; pain matching the crimson red of that thread—even now, there is an ache in my hips that pain belongs to. Waiting to be chosen Waiting to be loved Waiting to be accepted Waiting for a proper family Waiting for a mother that is sane Waiting for a father to come back...

I’m told that’s me on my first birthday,I’m told that’s my grandmother holding me A moment captured in time—she in her prime,joy upon her life,the baby that belonged to the apple of her eye. Wrapped in white lace like a cherub angel in the arms of grace,held by a woman who would go on to bebrokenfrom the loss of me—and of a life she prayed, day and night,the rosary,to be more than it ended up to b...

Why do we stay longer than we need to? Longer than we should? Staying past our welcome and well past the fun—Of life, of love, of places and spacesWe never won… Mythical trophy of reassurances—of “good job” and “well dones” If we’re lucky enough, in our elegant design of martyrdom, we might just find Someone to reward us with validating words As we lick the wounds from Being nearly burned and char...

I know it exists. I haven’t felt it in human form just yet. I hold out and continue my work,Making choices to abstain fromRelationships of all sorts—Particularly ones labeled stepping stones as suchTo the greatest love story ever felt or touched Because these days, I have become hers, and she, mine—The keepers of our own light. But I know it exists. An extravagantly peaceful love. When I think of...

My mother once told me a story when I was a little kid. Her mother had disappeared. They didn’t know if or when she would come back. I was told she had thrown in the towel on her life as a mother to ten and a wife to an old man. And even as a nine-year-old girl myself, I admired that action. Something about that story told me you don’t have to live in a hell—whether created by your own hands or so...

When life feels overwhelmingly vast , and your world narrows to your own face, your own life, and your own challenges, go to the edges of the earth—where the ocean meets the sand. Baptize yourself in its shattering cold, leaving the remnants of your human guise in its saltwater. Bask in the perspective of the limitlessness before you, so grand that its blue ripples can only be measured in time. Re...

I see you in old Chevy trucks with rust around the edges and in Mexican-colored blankets that cover the seats. If I’m lucky, I hear you in their engines when I pull up to a stoplight, and for a second— I’m 14 again, and you’re taking me to school before another grueling graveyard shift at the steel mill. You glance over with a bit of angst and say, “I’m sorry this truck embarrasses you, babe.” We...