Author: DrChance

I wake to the hum of a world I no longer trust—
its rhythms foreign,
its pulse unwelcoming.
Who am I in this vast, indifferent tide?
A mother, a scholar, a nameless ache
gnawing at the edges of what might have been.

The clock ticks faster than thought,
time a cruel overseer whipping the hours.
Four children.
A PhD.
Rows of accomplishments stacked like unread books,
their spines stiff, their stories hollow.
What do they mean,
when the mirror shows only a stranger?

Rushed breaths, chaotic steps,
thoughts colliding like moths in a jar—
a desperate fluttering for light,
for purpose,
for anything to soften this hard, empty ground.
Where is the safety net,
the confidant,
the promise whispered in the dark
that it all matters?

I built a house of titles and roles,
but the wind is inside,
rattling the windows,
mocking the locks.
No one comes to the door.
No one waits at the table.
The silence deafens.

What is the sum total of my being?
A body
drifting in the void of its own weight.
Purpose is a distant star,
cold and collapsing,
and I am
the light it forgets to emit.

Streaks of gold, sharp as breath, Slash the canvas—raw and sudden, Where air turns molten, alive and wild,
Like a whisper burning through silence.

Beneath, earth is smudged in ochre bruises,
The body pressed, its weight remembered.
Cracks snake through sienna plains,
Fractured, waiting—a shape in tension.

Water spills from the edges,
Thinned cobalt, soft and unruly.
It pools and spreads like love forgotten,
A cool ache melting into nothing.

The stars?
Smears of white, distant and restless,
Punched through the black with furious hands—
Blinding pinpricks that refuse to die.

And there, spirit sways—
A shadow layered in charcoal grays,
Breathing between the brushstrokes,
Haunting the space where words would fail.

It’s all here:
Breath and light, dust and love,
The body broken, the canvas whole—
An immortal thing, unfinished, alive.

Gray spreads thinly across a sad sky,
a thick, unspeaking quilt of clouds,
smothering the light with its quiet weight.
Leaves, crumpled letters from trees,
whisper their brittle secrets to the wind,
and the air, heavy with a chill,
presses against windows,
frames that hold more than glass—
our lives caught in panes,
reflections blurred, futures unclear.

Through the smudged transparency,
a distant movement:
a crow pulling at the earth,
its beak a dark tool, unearthing something old.
And I wonder if this is change—
a labor of wings and shadows,
a thing we dread before it blooms.

Inside, we pace,
our breath fogging the glass,
watching seasons collapse into each other.
What is winter but a pause?
A moment when time folds itself,
and we must endure the weight of not-knowing.

The window remains:
both barrier and promise.
We see through it,
but we cannot feel the sun.
Not yet.

She moves silently,
circling the table like a shadow with purpose.
A soft bump against your leg—
a nudge, a reminder—
I’m here. Don’t forget me.

Her eyebrows do the heavy lifting,
arching, furrowing,
communicating what words never could.
You feel them soften you,
like water wearing down stone.
She knows.
She always knows.

Around her, the world bends,
chairs shift, hands lower,
crumbs and morsels delivered
to her invisible throne.

At night, she becomes the sentinel.
Room to room, bed to bed,
she checks on us all,
her quiet assurance like a lullaby.
Only when the house settles,
when the lights dim,
does she rest.

Ginny,
the Taupe Beast, the landshark, the queen.
Not just a dog,
but the rhythm of our home.

Time is a stone in the shallows,
worn by waves unexpected.
We think we are still,
but the tide whispers:
you are moving, even now.

The dunes breathe beneath the sun,
grains sliding like quiet hours.
We wait for the sky to change,
but it is the waiting
that changes us.

Life slows in the liminal light,
gray stretching thin between now
and the what-if-soon.
We hold our breath,
but the earth keeps exhaling.

Rocks crumble, sand scatters,
nothing breaks all at once.
Even we,
shift unnoticed,
until the wind catches
on the edge of who we’ve become.

And when the change comes,
we will not see it arrive,
only the footprints left behind,
leading us
to somewhere new.

 Now don’t you cry for Clare Nell.
Her life was no gilded story—
it was bare hands on rough wood,
words sharp as the north wind,
and laughter that left its mark like a knife on soft pine.

In the nursing home, she didn’t fade.
She scrawled herself across the days,
a woman unbowed, cursing with gusto,
I needed her more than she needed me.

And when the sun hit the graveside,
it was just me and the preacher,
words of finality slipping into the earth,
hers still alive in the air,
Don’t you fret about me.

Her life burned bright and hard,
left scars and light in equal measure.
She was who she was,
and that was enough.

(I still cried when I heard she died and vowed to be by her graveside)

Woodsmoke drifts in quiet spirals,
Settling into the folds of autumn.
The orchard hums with its slow labor,
Apples softening in the cool light of day.

Hands reach, unhurried, for the fallen fruit,
Pennies earned beneath the low sun.
Time gathers in jars and barrels,
The tang of cider resting deep in earth.

Evening descends, golden and unbroken,
The breath of the past carried on the wind.
In this fleeting light, the seasons turn,
And we are rooted, as ever, to their song.

A rhythm as

sharp as

an unwanted question,

Each knock

on my house

a beat of possession.

Black and

white wings in

contrast beware,

A sentinel

of wood

 and air.

Not a feast

but a dance on

my hollow eaves,

Melody

tapping

through autumn leaves.

Perched

like a thought

I cannot shun,

It leaves, but the echo lives on.

(per my husband – it’s a stucco pecker)

In spring, something glimmers—
a pulse at the rim of sight,
wings stitched from light and sound,
vanishing before I find its center.

It arrives not like a visitor,
but like a memory—
just out of reach,
swirling in the currents of a season’s breath.

What does the air know
that I don’t?
Why do certain moments
arrive, shimmer, and disappear
without apology?

Each movement is a question,
small as a coin held in the palm:
What hums beneath us, unseen?
What traces remain
when everything slips away?

And still—
it feels like enough:
the blur, the drift,
the soft promise left behind
as petals scatter
through morning’s open hands.

I am born autumn,
and begun in gold and crimson—
but it is my friend who teaches me
that beauty is not in the fading,
but in what lingers quietly afterward.

Her kindness arrives like falling leaves—
not loud, but everywhere,
settling softly into the lives of others,
gathering brightness where there was none.

In her presence, I’ve seen the world bloom.
A spark she didn’t keep for herself,
she placed, tenderly, in others—
and they carry it forward,
creating beauty in places
they never thought to look.

What grace it is
to touch someone’s life and leave no trace,
only the warmth of having been understood,
like light slipping through the branches at dusk.

Her soul moves like autumn—
a gentle undoing, a quiet invitation
to become something more.
In every kindness she has given,
the world grows softer,
as if love had been woven
into the very air we breathe.

And though the seasons change,
her kindness stays—
in every small gesture carried on,
in every heart she helped to open,
and in me, too—
a leaf she taught how to turn toward the light.