Flowers for L

She adores the field
of goldenrods
and loves it above
the mountain summit

Empathy

when the lonely
comfort the lonely
then both feel less so

Bedside

from one moment to the next
you are like a candle in the wind
near you, I hold my breath

Echoes

your singing voice
reminds me of
a record my grandfather loved
with a tremolo that still
brings tears
to my eyes

Good Memories

the smiles of yesteryear
grow fainter by the day
but the contentment they evoke
hold eternal sway

Missing His Love

wishing I could journey away
back to those childish days
when ice cream was a simple solution
and a grandfatherly pat grants absolution

[Fiction] Arctic Full Circle

Grandmother in the old country never had an orange, for where she lived it was cold ten months out of the year. She knew the taste of seal blubber and could read the hooves of caribou, calculate the freshness of their crossing by turning her face into the wind; for they carried a musty scent and brought old ice with them. But she had never had an orange. It was her daughter who grew up with oranges, peaches and apples, flown or shipped from places more southern than she ever had traveled, tinned in dripping sauce or dried to crisps. And it was her granddaughter in Florida, who picked tangerines fresh from a veil of leaves, but who never knew the thunder of caribou’s hooves as they pierced the white, white snow.

Recovering from Estrangement

Broken bridges
can be mended
as long as we exist
but only if both ends
stubbornly persist.

[Fiction] Sons

For five years, Charles paints pictures of a slender teenaged girl whose face is never fully revealed. Sometimes, there is the jut of her shoulder blades on a low halter dress or an ankle lifted to better show off the gemstone set in the center of her heel. The hair is bobbed, long, or curled, but always the same wispy blond of fading sunlight.

His patrons think she is a past lover, a child lost too soon to the world, his soul trying on a new identity, a new gender. But she is his mother as he does not know her, for no child can know their mother as the child she was, once upon a time.

In that, Charles (even unwanted, abandoned) is reassured that he is just like all other sons.

Text Etiquette

If I think of unanswered texts
like I do unanswered letters
then either the party is “Deceased”
or moved, “Return to Sender.”

Either way, your correspondence
(and your relationship)
is not appreciated.