Category: Uncategorized

We left the humid air of Georgia,
where summers hang heavy like wet sheets on a line,
and headed west, following the slow unravel
of asphalt and unfamiliar sky.

Chattanooga met us first
where cliffs lean close to brick facades,
and the river curls through streets
like it’s choosing to stay.
Old stone, new glass,
coffee shops tucked beside train tracks,
the sound of water and freight and voices
still finding their way together.

Then Cairo
where two rivers hold their breath at the meeting,
and streets run out to an infinite void.
Storefronts sag under dust and heat,
their paint peeling back to brick and bone.
You can almost hear the swing of a screen door,
the echo of shoes on wood floors
in buildings no one enters now.
There’s history thick in the air,
but no one left to tell it.

Kansas gave us the Flint Hills,
grass rolling like a slow sea,
green on green, stitched with light.
Driving there, I thought of wagons
moving slow through this same sweep of land,
canvas stretched against a punishing sun,
families hoping for more than what they left behind.
We sped through in a day,
windows down, music up,
while the ghosts of their slow westward pull
rose and fell with the hills.

And then Colorado
flat at first, the sky opening wide enough
to swallow our small car whole,
then hills, sudden and laughing,
the road tossing us like kids on a carnival ride.

At last, Colorado Springs
where fields burned gold with sulphur bloom,
and Pike’s Peak stood watch,
stone-shouldered and unbothered
by the smallness of our journey.

We will unpack boxes
to stake our claim,
set dishes in cabinets like promises,
and opened the windows to air
we have yearned to breathe.

We did not promise.
We declared.

Not a wish but a reckoning,
not a hope but a hammerstrike
No caveats. No crown.

We lit the hill with that fire,
and the world turned to look.
Not because we were perfect
but because we said it out loud.
And meant to prove it.

We staggered forward, barefoot, bloodied
each step another argument
with ourselves.

We burned witches and raised railroads,
we broke chains and built prisons,
we welcomed millions and turned others away.
Still we stood ablaze,
flickering, flawed,
but visible.

Not for wealth.
Not for war.
But because we tried to make truth
our foundation stone.

And now?
Now they ask if the light’s gone out.
I say it’s buried
under slogans, screens, and silence.

Now the hill is swallowed in smoke,
and the light
doused by hands we thought would shield it.
Half our brethren cheer the wreckage,
chanting freedom
as they tear down its frame.
We stand in the ash,
not unbelieving
but broken by the knowing.

They took the words and locked them away,
Women, history, equity, diversity
sealed in silence, stamped with red,
as if the world could be unwritten.

They say a vanished word is a vanished truth,
that if we do not speak of bridges burned,
there will be no ash, no scars, no ghosts
only the echo of power unchallenged.

If we cannot name what’s broken,
how will we know what to mend?
If we cannot say women,
who will remember their fight?

Yet history does not live on the tongue.
It coils in the marrow of the beaten,
etched into the bones of the dispossessed,
a shadow script beneath the skin.

Persistence is resistance
not in whispers, not in breath,
but in the weight of bodies standing,
in hands that carve truth from silence.

They red-flag language,
tear pages from books,
cast voices into the abyss
but we drag them back, ink-stained and unbroken,
and we write them louder.

It comes sudden,
a tide in the air,
lifting the brittle leaves,
rattling the windows,
folding the sky over itself
like a sheet in unseen hands.

You know this feeling—
the shift, the coming undone.
How many times
have you stood at the edge
of what was certain,
only to watch it split open,
carried off in the reckless current?

But oh, you have learned—
to bend, not break,
to gather what’s left
with hands still open,
to listen when the wind speaks
of loss, of change,
of the endless work of becoming.

Even now, the earth
remakes itself.
Rivers carve new paths,
roots thread through stone,
and a tree, struck by lightning,
sends out a green shoot
toward the sun.

Let the storm come.
Let it howl its name.
When it passes,
you will step out,
the air fresh with its leaving,
the world made new again,
and so will you.

Yo—hold up. Nah. This ain’t real.
I swear there was food here. A whole-ass meal.
I roll up slow, give the bowl a nudge,
Nothing moves. Nothing budged.

Did I eat? Can’t be true.
Stomach’s talkin’, sayin’ who?
Sayin’ what? Sayin’ where’s my snack?
All I see is the bottom—shiny, black.

Step back. Assess. This some kind of trick?
I swear these humans move too quick.
One blink, one stretch, one shake of my fur—
And boom. My dinner? A forgotten blur.

But hold up—wait—I see a clue.
A crumb in the corner. Smells like… chew.
Did I eat? Did I smash? Did I clean my plate?
Guess I’ll never know. But it’s gettin’ late.

So I drop my eyes, put on my best,
That I ain’t never been fed distress.
They sigh. They laugh. They point at the clock.
But I stay hungry. The hustle don’t stop.

Snow comes soft and light,
like sifted sugar spilling from unseen hands,
settling on branches and stubborn leaves,
a peaceful canvas covering their brittle brown.

The children tumble out,
wide-eyed with wonder,
small boots breaking
the fragile lattice of white.
The last snow was only a memory—
watched through panes,
too distant to hold,
but today—today is theirs.

Birds alight far above the chill blanket,
or are tucked beneath eaves and hollows,
while the turkeys in their roost
grumble uneasily,
their voices low and wavering
against the stillness below.

Atlanta pauses.
Highways emptied,
businesses locked,
a city paused
in an unfamiliar stillness.

In this rare hush,
Georgia listens—
to the crackle of branches bowing,
to children’s laughter rising,
to snow falling gently,
a rare moment in time
but likely gone before the new day arrives.

The year is dying, but it does not die.
Its ashes scatter into the roots of days to come,
new shoots rising from the dark compost
to touch a sky just begun.

And in this turning, memory holds
the beauty of all we have been:
every fleeting now, caught like a glimmer of firelight,
woven into the fabric of what remains.

For now, we wait,
winds weaving through the hollow stillness,
carrying whispers of what has been
and the first notes of what will be.

We ascend, drawn to the mountain’s silence,
its call sharp as winter’s breath.
The summit gleams, distant and aloof,
while the plain, soft-shouldered, waits below.

The plain offers its expanse,
a cradle of grasses bending in the wind,
its rivers murmuring of belonging,
but our eyes are on the heights.

The mountain reaches, stone by stone,
for the open arms of the earth.
And the plain, wide and generous,
dreams of the mountain’s steadfast embrace.

We wander between these longings,
hearts anchored in absence,
blind to the hands that reach for us—
the ones who name us home.

What does it mean to choose or be chosen?
The mountain stands because the plain holds it;
the plain endures because the mountain shelters the rain.
Each shape exists for the other,
yet they never see their union.

If we could rest, for just a moment,
in the valley’s gentle fold,
we might know this:
the ground beneath us always chooses,
even as we strive for what lies beyond.

To be human is to ache in the marrow,

To carry pain like a secret we can’t let go

We lash out when we are broken,

Though the wound bleeds us

Just the same

We walk on the bones of ancient stars

Their dust threading through our veins

We are the light they left behind

Both ephemeral and endless we shimmer

Our hearts are both vault and void,

Echoing with the longing of what

We cannot hold

There is a pulse beating

in rhythm with times retreat

a fleeting claim on eternity

Our hands reach for what will hurt us,

Clutching shadows that slip through fingers

Our arms cradle what will leave us

As if to hold will stop the unraveling

To be human is to embody the contradictions,

To be vast and small, fleeting and eternal

To be the universe dreaming of itself

And to know the dream will someday end