by The Hearth Voice · 13 lines
Before the first dance,
she slips into the quiet corridor
with her father's photograph.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 11 lines
The speaker turns toward the screen
and every sentence becomes text.
Not perfect text.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 68 lines
My mother carried me
before I was a person.
Carried me in the dark
of her own body.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 12 lines
The window fan pulls evening
through a screen warm with dust.
Outside, sprinklers begin
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 13 lines
Above the laundromat sign,
the moon keeps no appointment.
Below it, shirts revolve,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 80 lines
At 3 AM the hospital breathes differently—a low hum of machines keeping promises the doctors wrote and went home.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 87 lines
The bell is ringing
somewhere.
Not for you—not yet—
but don't ask who it's for.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 13 lines
One more minute, I said,
and the minute built a room.
It hung our coats,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
All night the rain keeps the ledger,
counting each roof tile twice,
tapping the gutter for answers,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
Rain needles the visor
until every headlight flowers.
The lane line disappears,
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 82 lines
The sky was the kind of blue that makes you think nothing bad could happen—which is how you know you're still in the before.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 82 lines
This poem is not going
to pretend
it knows what you're feeling.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 74 lines
Everyone remembers
the fall.
Nobody talks about
the flying.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 60 lines
The first year after someone dies is a minefield of ordinary things. Their coffee mug. Their side of the bed.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 68 lines
I know your name
but not the one
on your driver's license.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 69 lines
I know you're tired.
I know the kind of tired
that sleep doesn't fix.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 100 lines
It's not the number
that breaks you.
Six million
is a statistic so large
it becomes abstract.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 87 lines
You pack
what you can carry.
Not what you need—what you can carry.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 64 lines
The first month
you count the days.
The second month
you count the weeks.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 14 lines
The water holds no explanation.
It receives the child's forehead,
the trembling hand,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 73 lines
They tried to write us
out of the story.
Edited us to margins.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 70 lines
Being in love is the thing that comes after the fireworks—the quiet drive home with the windows down and someone's hand on your knee.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 34 lines
Bring nothing.
Bring your body and your coat
and a tissue you will find
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 65 lines
Because the news
tells you what happened
but a poem
tells you what it felt like.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 14 lines
Praise the cracking open of the seed,
the blind ambition of the buried root,
the robin's first bewildered, breathless creed
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 69 lines
Today is not special.
No one circled it
on a calendar.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 3 lines
After the rainfall,
a snail draws its silver line
across the stone step.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 29 lines
The strangest part is the ordinary:
how the fridge still hums its one note,
how the bills arrive
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
At nine the garden is still visible,
though supper has been cleared away.
A moth works the lavender.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
Birches bend their bright backs.
Cedars click and call.
Dry grasses drag their green sleeves
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 73 lines
I loved her
the way Poe loved—
not with sense but with fever.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 60 lines
The ocean doesn't care
that you're watching.
This is what makes it
worth watching.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 11 lines
At the red light,
the engine warms my knees.
A child in the next car
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 29 lines
August is a thief
who comes dressed as a gift:
the peach at its most golden
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
The ocean has moved its furniture,
leaving wet sand,
three green ropes of weed,
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
Because the bus was late,
I watched an old man split an orange
and give the brighter half
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 11 lines
Helmet buckled.
Gloves pulled tight.
One boot testing gravel.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
The usher arrives before music,
checks the aisle for anything
that might catch a cane,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 3 lines
Fresh snow on the rail—
a red bird waits while one wing
rests under the eave.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 82 lines
Korea
is a peninsula—
land reaching into water
like a hand trying to touch something.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 10 lines
Between the apple and the sandwich
I fold a yellow square:
Happy birthday.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 10 lines
We pick the dark ones carefully,
leaving red fruit for another week.
Thorns write thin corrections
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
A blue bowl waits on the table,
patient as a patch of sky.
It has held pears, keys,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 13 lines
The moon owns nothing.
Not the pale road,
not the pond's open hand,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 77 lines
I looked it up:
inside the chrysalis,
the caterpillar doesn't
just grow wings.
It dissolves.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 10 lines
You light your own candles now,
choose the restaurant,
bring wine to our table.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
The glass ornament broke last year,
so the children cut a star
from the delivery box.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 3 lines
Red bird on the fence—
a butterfly opens noon
above the milkweed.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 40 lines
What I think about most
is not the miracles—
the water, the wine,
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 79 lines
City of shoulders, Sandburg said, and the shoulders are still here—broader now, more tattooed, still carrying what needs carrying.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 10 lines
Our robes were ordered in one size:
cathedral curtain.
We climb the steps like weather,
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 40 lines
The tree is the same tree—same ornaments, same star, same lights that blink like they don't know someone is missing.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 86 lines
When you died
in the game,
the screen went dark
and two words appeared:
Continue? Game Over.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
A thin moon remains
above the eastern roofs,
late to leave
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 79 lines
My therapist says
I hide in metaphors.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 9 lines
Find the match in the kitchen drawer.
Invite no grand metaphor yet.
Remember how quickly one spark travels.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
The window has written
its pale breath on the glass.
In the yard, one maple
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 68 lines
She wore the backpack like a turtle shell—too big for the body, perfect for the bravery.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 96 lines
The world decided
to start over
last night.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
We press the dough outward
with impatient knuckles.
One edge stays thick.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 33 lines
Flowers, I have learned,
are not about beauty.
They are about the argument
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 65 lines
I know your tired.
Not the kind
that sleep fixes.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 69 lines
We grew up in the same house but different childhoods—you got the version after they figured some things out.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 57 lines
I didn't marry the man who brought flowers. I married the man who noticed I was crying in the kitchen and didn't ask why—just stood there and washed the dishes.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 81 lines
They weren't lying
about the green.
But they didn't tell you
there'd be forty shades.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 85 lines
Under the lights
every town
is the same town.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 35 lines
You have never asked me
how my day was
and yet you are the only one
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 28 lines
I don't know what I believe
but I know the feeling
when the light hits the kitchen table
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 81 lines
They are the original
record of us—
the vinyl before
the streaming.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 11 lines
No thunder follows.
The horizon opens and closes
its pale electric mouth.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 44 lines
She walks
like she knows
something
the room doesn't.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 62 lines
My grandmother's hands
were a map
of everywhere she'd been.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 39 lines
There is a jacket on my chair
that doesn't belong to me,
and this is how you know
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 64 lines
Don't start
with what it means.
Start with how it sounds.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 77 lines
The lights go down
and we become anonymous—
a room full of strangers
agreeing to feel together.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 71 lines
Everyone is clean
today.
Fresh calendars.
Fresh starts.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
North of us, gardens hold their longest evening.
Here the sun leaves early.
We button coats at the harbor
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 76 lines
Wales doesn't shout.
Wales hums.
It hums in the valleys
where the coal used to live.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 61 lines
Hay palabras
que se quedaron
en la garganta—
no por cobardía.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 25 lines
The roof stayed on.
The old elm did not.
Its roots lifted dark earth
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 103 lines
There are things
I should have told you sooner.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 66 lines
You never asked for a day.
That's the most
father thing about you.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 37 lines
You are leaving.
I know this the way I know weather—
not from the forecast
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 70 lines
You're not going to believe this,
but the thing
that's breaking you right now
won't matter in three years.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 76 lines
Dear Space,
I know you're mostly nothing.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of you is empty.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 10 lines
On the late bus home
I open a book no shelf could hold.
A dictionary waits beneath my thumb.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 64 lines
Love is like a house fire—
not the kind
that starts in the kitchen.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
At Rhossili, the tide withdraws
far enough to alter distance.
Wet sand holds the sky.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 70 lines
Mamá
es la primera palabra
que aprende la boca,
y la última
que olvida el cuerpo.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 12 lines
Mornings make mistakes.
They put the light too early,
leave fog in the low fields,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 11 lines
At the trailhead the sky is certain.
Halfway up, certainty closes.
Cloud enters through the pines.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 12 lines
In the museum of small noises
I keep the click of your key,
the cupboard closing softly,
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 57 lines
We shared a room
for sixteen years
and I still don't know
your favorite color.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 32 lines
My grandmother's kitchen
had no recipe book.
She measured everything
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 30 lines
My mother's hands could find a fever
through a forehead,
could tell a melon's ripeness
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 41 lines
My sister knows the password
to every secret I've owned
since 1996,
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 51 lines
My sister's hands look like mine—same short fingers, same bitten nails, same tendency to talk with them when the mouth runs out of words.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 13 lines
Beneath the order of music,
a small line reads:
We remember those
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 11 lines
Healing is not a straight line.
It is a dog path through tall grass,
a pocket full of wrong turns,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 11 lines
A red number gathers
in the corner of the morning.
One becomes five.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 70 lines
Tonight the world gives us
permission
to be something else.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 51 lines
The maples don't grieve.
That's the first lesson.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 25 lines
O body, you magnificent disaster,
you creak now getting out of chairs
and take the stairs a half-beat slower
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 12 lines
At the end of the wedding aisle,
one chair holds flowers
instead of a body.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 57 lines
Two oranges in my jacket—heavy as the future, round as the world I wanted to give her but couldn't afford.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
I folded yesterday's bad news
into a small white boat
and set it on the gutter stream.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 31 lines
We are forty now and live
in different cities with different groceries.
You buy oat milk. I buy the regular kind.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 63 lines
I didn't know I was looking until I found you—the way you don't know you're cold until someone hands you a blanket.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 56 lines
Someone told me once
that poetry is for school.
That it lives between September and June.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 28 lines
She does this thing with bobby pins—
holds three between her lips
like small dark fish
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 11 lines
The whistle sends us climbing
from blue water into evening.
Wet feet slap concrete.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 63 lines
Quédate,
no porque yo te lo pida,
sino porque la noche
es más larga.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 10 lines
Rain lays a gray glaze
along the lane.
Gate chains shake.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 13 lines
Rain follows us beneath the roof
at Cardiff Central,
shining on coats and platform signs.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 88 lines
It's raining again
and I have nowhere
to be angry about it.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 12 lines
Sunday arrives sideways with rain.
Umbrellas bloom in the vestibule.
Children shake water from their sleeves.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 12 lines
The Son stands ankle-deep in Jordan water.
The Spirit descends—not captured,
not owned—a dove's brief shape
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 35 lines
I've started keeping Saturdays
the way some people keep a journal—
every detail logged,
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 55 lines
Saturday starts with silence,
slow and soft,
sheets still warm
from sleeping in.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
One steadies the ladder.
One climbs.
One reads the instructions
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 11 lines
Go slow on the old road home.
Low stone walls hold
snow in their broken rows.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 10 lines
Make the day small enough:
this spoon, this soup,
the square of sun beside the sink.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
Soft shoes on stone,
slow steps through sleep—
the sea slips silver
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 80 lines
I don't know
what it means.
The museum card says
Oil on canvas, 1889.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 57 lines
Summer is the season that forgets to end on time—it lingers at the shore like a guest who loves your house more than you do.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 79 lines
Nobody sits
where they're supposed to.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 67 lines
There is an age—
somewhere between three and five—
when a child discovers
the most powerful word
in any language.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 11 lines
Today my mind predicts
one hundred percent disaster
with scattered embarrassment
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 64 lines
She wasn't required
to love me this much.
That's the thing about aunts.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 82 lines
They call it the beautiful game
and they're wrong—
it's the desperate game.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 77 lines
Beauty is not
what you think.
It's not the sunset.
Everyone agrees about the sunset.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 46 lines
You are the person
I don't clean the house for.
This is the highest compliment I know.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 65 lines
The birds don't care
that you're trying to sleep.
They have a concert.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 5 lines
A hat with a glittering crown
kept slipping repeatedly down;
you wore it with pride,
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 65 lines
He's not the one
she imagined.
She imagined someone
with a plan.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 71 lines
There was a morning—
I don't remember which one—
when you walked into the kitchen
and I looked up.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 82 lines
My father's car was a 1987 something—I forget the model but remember the sound: a cough that meant winter.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
All morning the river refused us.
The float drifted.
The line snagged willow.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 64 lines
The cat does not love you.
Let's be clear about that.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 25 lines
My father's chair still faces the window
where he watched the street
as if expecting a delivery
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 12 lines
The chair remembers your weight.
At dusk it turns toward the window,
expecting your book,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 78 lines
I carry a country
that fits in no suitcase,
that cannot be folded
into neat squares.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 61 lines
The best basketball
happens after the game.
When the gym is locked
and the scoreboard is off.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 74 lines
I'm not going
to be cool about this.
I've tried.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 40 lines
The most important conversations of my life happened over food I can't remember and meals I'll never forget.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 11 lines
The women came carrying spices,
not certainty.
Morning had barely found the stone.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 68 lines
You dreamed something
important last night.
I know this
because you always do.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 67 lines
The man at the coffee shop
paid for the person behind him.
This is not the poem.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 11 lines
The photographer says closer.
An uncle moves behind the tallest cousin.
A niece kneels in front,
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 10 lines
The final amen has seven endings.
The organ chooses one.
The choir chooses another.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 25 lines
The new room echoes
when I set down the box.
On its side, black marker:
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 67 lines
The line goes out. The line comes back empty. This is the lesson: most of what you cast into the world returns without what you wanted.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 32 lines
It isn't sadness. Sadness has a shape—
you can walk around it, point to it,
explain it to a doctor
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 61 lines
You don't keep score.
That's how I know.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 56 lines
The score doesn't matter.
I know it does.
I know there are people
who will read that sentence
and close the poem.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 50 lines
After she died, her garden kept going—which felt, at first, like a betrayal.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 80 lines
Ninety feet
between the bases.
Someone measured this
and got it perfectly right.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 26 lines
Every night I visit a house
I have never lived in
but my hands know where the light switch is.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 12 lines
The kettle starts politely,
a small complaint behind its teeth,
then works itself to outrage—
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 12 lines
The kettle is a small volcano
with better manners.
It gathers its thunder,
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 73 lines
The kettle hisses
its slow complaint—
ssssssss—
like a secret
it's been holding
since last night.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 74 lines
There is a dialect
spoken only
in the dark—
not because it's shameful.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 13 lines
We choose the station café
because neither of us wants
an official goodbye.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 78 lines
We took the same route.
Past the mailbox
you always had opinions about.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 11 lines
Dark says door.
Grief says closed.
Fear says every road
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 12 lines
At closing time, the books
pretend to sleep.
The atlases flatten their seas.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 74 lines
Not the big things.
Everyone is grateful
for the big things.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 73 lines
Marriage is a long argument
about the thermostat.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 32 lines
The machines keep count of something—
not life exactly, more like
the argument life makes
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 10 lines
The sign says home is twenty miles.
I choose the road that makes it forty.
Past the quarry,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 47 lines
June gives us the longest day
and we still waste most of it
talking about the weather.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 67 lines
He's always there
when I arrive—waiting,
with my face
but not my certainty.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 71 lines
My grandfather
could fix anything.
The toaster.
The fence.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 29 lines
I used to draw the map with more on it—
the house would be bigger,
the job would have a window,
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 67 lines
My grandmother's kitchen
smelled like a country
that no longer exists.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 90 lines
Missing someone
is not an emotion.
It's a location.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 78 lines
The mountain
doesn't care
that you're climbing it.
It was here before your species.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 31 lines
You are not the friend
who arrives with flowers.
You are the friend
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 77 lines
You didn't choose them.
They were assigned to you
by an algorithm
of proximity and payroll.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 73 lines
I want to say the thing you already know but haven't heard out loud—the thing that sits in the back of your chest like a fist that forgot to open.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 14 lines
The new hand does not remember.
It learns.
Cup first.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 66 lines
Sunday morning.
Before the sermon.
Before the hymns
and the handshakes.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 66 lines
Loneliness is not
being alone.
I want to be clear about that.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 63 lines
The roses I remember most
are the ones
you didn't send.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 11 lines
Two doctors lean toward one screen,
one where the snow has closed the road,
one three countries east.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 12 lines
At noon I stand beside the old wall
and find my shadow folded
almost entirely beneath me.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 76 lines
My grandfather had a shed.
My father has a garage.
I have a corner of the basement.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 55 lines
We have a language
that no one else speaks.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 25 lines
We don't say I love you anymore.
We say: your phone is at eleven percent.
We say: I picked up the thing
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 59 lines
The caterpillar
is not trying
to teach you anything.
It's just eating a leaf.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 82 lines
I know
you don't want
a poem
about a spider.
But consider.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 94 lines
Strength is not
the fist.
It's the unclenching.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 12 lines
The sun has no manners.
It barges through the blinds,
throws gold across my pillow,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
By August the sunflower
is taller than the fence
and less interested in us.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 72 lines
You didn't have to.
That's the part I keep coming back to.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 74 lines
My brain
has no off switch.
I've looked.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 81 lines
At first
it was a guest.
Showed up
uninvited
but charming.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 79 lines
A child asks:
why is the sky blue?
And you start to answer
and realize
you don't actually know.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 84 lines
Culture
is not the museum.
Culture is the grandmother
who won't let you leave without eating.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 73 lines
You will outgrow shoes.
This is expected.
You will outgrow clothes,
bedrooms.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 68 lines
You came first.
Four minutes.
That's all it took
for you to claim the title of oldest.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 65 lines
We said 'for richer or poorer' but we meant: I will eat gas station sushi with you at midnight and call it a date.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 70 lines
He doesn't talk about it.
This is how you know.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 33 lines
Children don't walk anywhere.
They haven't learned the adult art
of getting from one place to another
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 77 lines
It starts before you wake.
Somehow
it's already there.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 69 lines
Other men
describe their wives
like cars they've owned too long.
I refuse.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 29 lines
My father's workshop smelled of pine
and something electrical—
the ozone ghost of a drill
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 91 lines
The first month,
I kept calling.
Not on purpose.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 60 lines
You are not the poem I set out to write. You are the poem that wrote itself—sideways, surprising, with terrible spelling and the most honest last line.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 61 lines
You didn't bring flowers.
You brought takeout
and the correct opinion
about the show I was watching.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 71 lines
I didn't marry the woman
I fell in love with.
I married the one
who showed up after.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 12 lines
For twenty minutes the path climbs
through white air.
No valley, no destination,
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 72 lines
The tulips don't know
it's still cold.
Or they know
and they don't care.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 25 lines
One clean shirt.
Two matching socks.
The kettle before rain.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 11 lines
One fire burns behind the stove glass,
measured in logs and waiting.
The other begins in the argument:
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 13 lines
Your train leaves the coast
as mine enters the city.
Between us: five stations,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 29 lines
I write you letters in my head
on the bus, in the shower,
in the three seconds
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 11 lines
At 3:14 every phone sounds.
The river has crossed the lower road.
Move uphill now.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 12 lines
Say home and a lamp comes on.
Say mother and rain begins
somewhere behind the ribs.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 45 lines
It's not the grand gestures.
It's not the airport sprint,
the boom box on the lawn.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 77 lines
A book is a door
that doesn't need a key.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 60 lines
It's not the presents.
I know it's not the presents
because the best Christmas I ever had
was the year we couldn't afford them.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 77 lines
Fire
knows one thing:
how to eat.
It eats wood. It eats paper.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 73 lines
Home is not
the address.
It's the sound
the lock makes
when you've been gone
too long.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 35 lines
He doesn't know I keep a list.
Not on paper—in the body,
in the part that doesn't forget.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 33 lines
I mean the way he folds the map
even though the phone knows where we are.
I mean the scar above his eyebrow
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 86 lines
I mean
I memorized the sound
of your breathing
when you're almost asleep.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 64 lines
This is for the person
who is dying
and knows it.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 33 lines
This morning you stood at the mirror
and cursed your hair
with a creativity
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 60 lines
There's a song
that knows more about your life
than your therapist.
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 60 lines
My mother gave me her worry—that gene that runs through women in my family like a river that never learned to rest.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 83 lines
I used to think
peace was silence—
the absence of noise.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 37 lines
Spring doesn't arrive.
It trespasses—
one crocus first,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 74 lines
The body knows things
the mind will never admit.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 60 lines
The dog does not remember
your promotion.
The dog does not remember
your argument with your mother.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 59 lines
The horse knows something about running that we've forgotten—how the whole body becomes the verb.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 65 lines
The moon has heard
every confession
ever whispered
from a bedroom window.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 74 lines
Time takes
the things you thought
were permanent.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 63 lines
They asked me to say something.
As if the right words exist.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 65 lines
When you stand
in front of everyone you know
and a few people you don't.
Read, listen and share →by The Quiet Voice · 74 lines
The eulogy is the hardest poem: you must condense a life into minutes, make a room full of crying people laugh at least once.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 50 lines
The thing about winter
is that it's honest.
No leaves to hide behind.
Read, listen and share →by The Bright Voice · 10 lines
Question ten still waits
with four empty lines.
I have written however
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 44 lines
Because prose takes the highway and poetry takes the fire escape—both get you there but one shows you the view from the outside of the building.
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 47 lines
Because the body knows things the mind won't admit—and music is the language the body speaks when words have failed their shift.
Read, listen and share →by The Devotional Voice · 13 lines
We had closed every window
and called our fear prudence.
Still the Spirit came—
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 12 lines
At five, the office windows
begin returning the sky.
Screens go dark.
Read, listen and share →by The Wild Voice · 10 lines
All winter the motorcycle waits
beneath a grey cover.
I turn the wheels by hand,
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 14 lines
The windows fog with everything we've made—
the stew, the bread, the kettle's weary sigh—
and past the glass the garden starts to fade
Read, listen and share →by The Hearth Voice · 14 lines
The afternoon closes before the dishes dry.
We switch on the lamp at four,
set soup between us,
Read, listen and share →by The Night Voice · 76 lines
I've been trying
to describe your eyes
for six years
and I keep getting it wrong.
Read, listen and share →