Earl Grey Morning
Even the name of it soothes.
the violet soft of it,
purled, curling stir of it,
rising through cold
like a promise.
From dark there is dawn --
first fog, then a song.
And even the sense of it soothes.
The cupped balmy breath of it,
pressed against palm of it,
steeping the dark
like an oath.
From warmth will come glow –
soft first and soft-slow.
Easy, the taste of it soothes.
The deep woodsy heft of it,
rich malted zest of it,
breaking the black
like a vow.
From dark will come light,
cool bergamot bright.
So, for now, just feel
for the sunrise,
the wayfinding blessings
are always unwinding and
binding themselves
like a pact.
Find fragrance in the dark.
Seize promise.
Feel the spark.
The house, cozy at dawn, and me in my bathrobe and soft Santa socks, Christmas lights glowing, playlist carols going… sipping my coffee and sorting my thoughts,
How lucky am I, I think — no, I know. How blessed to be snuggled beneath a warm velvet throw in the crook of a sectional with my laptop and nowhere to go while watching the sky shift to silver at dawn.
How simple, how sumptuous — an extravagance, bar none –that not everyone has. To have a sanguine soul in a world that exsanguinates souls. My gratitude is great. My cup overflows.
My sons are nestled all snug in their beds and my girls grown and glowing in orbits they threaded and hung on their own, weaving constellations that tell their tales, cast shimmering trails of goodness and grace.
While the boys, on the cusp of their own greatness, silver their way toward their own dawns, stars blooming bright on their baby cheeks and burgeoning lives, and the sky’s (no the universe) is their limit too, destinies unspooling just like their sisters’,, but entirely their own.
I celebrate all their stories, all their tangled strands of light unwound from my body, ever unwinding and widening, bright and brighter still, stringing their gifts like drops of Jupiter, like sun-wrangled, star-spangled miracle-bringers of goodwill and good trouble in this dark world.
There is no greater joy, no greater comfort for a mother’s heart than to see the babies she brought into this world out there in it, slaying and making spirits bright — hers most especially.
They come in threes, they say. Bad things come in threes. And sure
enough, bad tidings rode in on their serrated fonts in swirling
impatient portals: an unholy trinity of cyst, malignancy and mass.
One slung sideways, like a fanny pack across a kidney sack, a second,
mortared to wind pipe, spewing ash into places unknown, a third sucking
marrow from mammary glands like a motherfucker. Unsanctified settlers,
all. Mother of all that is Holy, who let in the false prophet, the devil, the
beast to cast rings around x-rays and pockets full of poison, ashen shadows
on MRI scans? All that rot and stink and bile planted like rancid Easter eggs,
tangled spiders’ nests, like hissing snakes in sacred sanctuaries… Such blatant
blasphemy. Such sick sacrilege. But then, while bad things come in threes, so
too, do good. And we believe in the Good — that Triumvirate of Truth: Faith
and Hope and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. Love lends strength and
courage to fight. When we harness for God the energies of love, then love will
help conquer all. Together, we’ll banish the bad for Good. Even the dirty, rotten C word.
(and for all our schools)
So much depends
upon
a brown door,
hollow,
framed with glass
windows,
between the gun &
children
It’s not enough.
Do something.
Sincerely,
Heather Peters Candela Teacher and Parent
Juneteenth is an important day in America’s history, not only for ancestors of enslaved people to celebrate emancipation, but as a reminder for the rest of us that it hasn’t always been about freedom and justice for all in this country…
and to warn us that unless we understand and own our country’s past injustices, we might get there again.
A date on a calendar is not enough to ensure we don’t. A “Happy Juneteenth” is not enough.
Maybe the best way is to walk a mile in the shoes of those who’ve been there. Read or watch or visit places that tell their stories. Hear and understand.
This book. This one in my picture. Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward. The title is a line from Dante’s Inferno where Virgil becomes Dante’s tour guide through hell – and that is what this book will do for you.
It will take you on a tour through an enslaved woman’s hell. You will inhabit the mind and body of Annis. You will feel her pain, her hunger, her suffering, her horrors.
It’s hard reading. Brutal.
But imagine living it.
Juneteenth deserves to be recognized. But even more, it deserves to be understood.
She slips into her fuzzy bathrobe with all the sleep-rimmed focus of cream unfurling in coffee. Eyes but slits, she stirs the marble mist. Shadows spin and settle; shrubbery and tree line appear. Lawn purls silver-sage, and the yearling slips from his bed to graze at the sod-scalloped hem between clearing and wood. A roll of her perfumed wrist and his coat froths cappuccino; the dogwoods don lemon lime skirts. Onward she shuffles now, gathering steam. Wiping her eyes: the limbs limn tears. Flexing her toes: the moss fuzzes stone. The yearling cocks his head to the arched swirl of undergrowth, an almost-cave of wonder and wild behind him. The sun-sprinkled lawn, bustling and bursting with civilized snacks, in front. Inward or out? he ponders in pause. Meanwhile, sliding off her slipper and sash,
Dawn lifts gold arms
to comb back the last clinging
haze from her crown.
I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling
— Isaiah 51:22
Our minds are not yours
to have your way with.
No, not our bodies either.
Keep your key to our lives
and achievements to yourself.
You are no master of ours.
Still, you come to us with longing
and unsolicited advice:
Let down your hair and your goals
and your dangerous gender ideologies.
Be your husband’s pride and joy,
of less daring — more noble — character.
More for less.
You want us smaller
(the little woman
cowered under
Adam’s rib).
YOU COWARD.
You want our riches, but not our power.
Our diamonds, coal, cherries, oil.
You want to strip us, nail us, crush us,
pillage, plunder, f**k us.
Well f**k that.
Our world is not your oyster.
You cannot plumb our depths.
And because we will not let you,
you’re hellbent to pry the lock
and nail us to the cross you claim
we’re destined to bear ‘til kingdom come.
Your kingdom.
But how’s that old parable go?
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
followed by horse, rider, battle, and kingdom…
There’s a proverb for you.
You want us trembling?
We’ll give you the very cup of trembling.
I expected to feel less than whole. To mourn my uterus, to miss the procreant cradle where my babies rocked until I rolled them out and raised them up. To perhaps feel like I’m missing what makes me a woman. But that’s not what I felt.
I’ve felt missing completely. Lost in a head full of white static, my body lost in post-anesthetic cotton batting. Muffled thoughts floating in half-dreams and white-sheet other-worlds opened by robotic arms and pain-numbing canister snaps. So disconnected. So dejected. Missing parts and missing people. Body blue and punctured, matching my mood.
I also didn’t expect the exhaustion. Weights hooked and hanging at the end of my limbs, the start of my thoughts. Everything sluggish and sidelined. Everything empty. I shed a lot of tears. Felt sorry for myself. Felt forgotten and alone.
But that was far from the truth — was all the fallacy of post-surgical funk. Because I have had so many people rally around me and my family. So many people shower us with love. So many meals delivered, texts sent, pickups and drop offs completed, prayers spoken. I grow weepy (with gratitude this time) just thinking about it.
And today, the cobwebs and cotton batting are limned in a see-through-the-murky-to-better-days brightness. I feel like I’m closer to the other side now – the side where my family is, my friends are, where energy pours like sunshine and waterfalls. It’s shimmering there in the haze like the northern lights I missed the weekend of my surgery. The shine is returning. I’m nearly there.
And it’s all thanks to a little help from my friends, my family, my people, my village.
Picture this… Mothers and Daughters
Their procreative powers celebrated and valued
Along with
Their minds and voices, acknowledged and revered
— whether child-bearing, child-rearing, bread-winning, globe-setting or game-changing.
Women, not relegated to house and home, but women, free to regulate themselves.
Free to roam.
It could happen. It still could.
Picture so many women, Mothers and Daughters,
set to tell their stories. Mothers and Daughters
with stories like mine and hers and theirs.
Stories ready to be sung out, loud and proud.
Ready to upset the maelstrom of men and their spheres of control,
their spears of control,
manipulating stories.
controlling bodies,
codifying minds.
Women set to tell their stories unhobbled by laws, unhanged with stigma, unsacrificed on altars, no longer denigrated and diminished.
Picture Mothers and Daughters unlabeled.
Unlabeled as virgins, ladies, cock-teases, cougars, sluts, spinsters, trophy wives, whores, hags. Frigid or loose. Nasty or pure.
Unlabeled. Unhysterical, Unfat, Unskinny, Unugly, Unhot.
Unused and Unabused.
But no longer UnSung. Singing so many stories.
It could happen. It will.
That’s where me and my kind come in. The writers, the poets, the instigators.
The storytellers.
We play a fundamental role in the histories of Her Stories.
We keep the home fires burning,
Fostering and fueling far more than fires in hearths.
Feeding fires in hearts.
Encouraging stargazing, fire eating, and drops of Jupiter in our hair.
It’s in our dna, and has been, since the wheel first whetted the knife. Caves first oxidized hands.
And we’ll keep doing it until the reach of our arms and the span of our hips, and the stride of our steps no longer fits the limits of their boxes.
Until our potential is so great, vibrates so powerfully, wells and swells so phenomenally, that their spheres all burst and new worlds are all birthed, new galaxies unfold…
And we all find a place.
Our place –
– for ourselves and our daughters.
Until then.
Football gives me chills. And chest tightness. And tachycardia. And tremors. And hypotension. And breathlessness. And Fatigue. But it’s all good. I promise.
Let me explain…
Yesterday, just after 1:00 PM, I kissed my husband goodbye and watched him head off to the football war room, a scenario we’ve repeated every Sunday afternoon since early August. He strolled purposely down our sidewalk, his bag full of notes on this week’s opposing team’s tendencies slung over his shoulder.As I watched him leave, my chest tightened with pride. It’s Week Two of Georgia High School playoffs. The competition is getting fiercer, so Mike and his fellow defensive coaches burned the midnight oil preparing their game plan.
It’s a mysterious process to me, the deconstruction of an offense. In my fiercely romantic brain, I imagine it’s an exposition closely akin to the annotation and explication of metaphysical poetry. I picture the guys huddled around their Hudl screens, marking up schemes with dexterity and determination, scrutinizing pistol formations and pondering triple options with the same respect and gritty fortitude that I scrutinize syntax and ponder paradox, searching for the key to decipher the cryptic code and whittle it down into chewable chunks.
I’m sure it’s a formidable feat, arduous and time-consuming; always open to interpretation; and painfully exquisite– if that’s your thing. And it is absolutely, positively my guy’s thing. For the past decade, I’ve watched him light up like a Hurricane scoreboard when he talks shop with fellow coaches. Football powwows with people in the know is one of his most intense pleasures. And I love that he’s found his niche within this fine group of coaching fellows. Perhaps I’m biased, but I truly believe they may be the most amazingly gifted and gracious crew ever to be assembled in the history of high school football.
Watching them from the stands as they interact with their players on Friday nights, tremors of excitement run up and down my spine. It starts with pregame. I love seeing the boys clustered around their position coaches, going through their drills. The bursts of whistle and muscle; the blur of footballs and footwork; the thud of shoulder pads and practice punts. Pregame gives me shivers.
And then there is the moment at the beginning of every game, just prior to kick off, when the boys and their coaches march evenly out across half the field and kneel. One-hundred-twenty-plus boys of one-hundred-fifty-plus pounds – they all take a knee and give the Lord a moment of silence and respect.
It leaves me breathless.
Then the world speeds back up again. The crowds gather; the cheerleaders chant; the bands play; the lights hum; and the stadium pulses. But just before it all goes down, just before the band plays Amazing Grace and The Star-Spangled Banner, just before the team runs through the tunnel of swirling white smoke and takes the field, just before the scoreboard sounds off and the place kicker blasts off, Mike climbs the stadium steps on his way to the box. And he always stops off to deliver a kiss to me and our boys. Seeing him approach, his chocolate eyes smiling, his caramel skin glowing, his wide, warm shoulders swaying, my heart swells and my knees go weak. I am truly a blessed woman.
Yes, Friday nights give me goosebumps. Good old-fashioned, puckered-up chicken skin. And not because I’m lucky enough to get a pre-game kiss from a tall mug of coaching caramel macchiato. (Although that helps, too.) But because boy, can our boys play some ball. And man, can our men coach ‘em up. There is nothing like a good, crisp, spiral-sliced Friday night.
And now we’ve been blessed with a second week in our playoff run. And I’m praying for another three after this. Another three-and-a-half weeks of single parenthood and lonely bedtimes. The boys and I have this routine down pat. It’s old hat. And we’re in it for the long haul.
So here’s hoping and praying for another four weeks of Sunday War Rooms, Chili Night Wednesday Nights, Friday Night Lights and everything in between. I’m ready for the run. My heart can take it. My body is addicted to the thrilling, physiological effects of really good football. And it’s all good.
Our Real Modern Family
I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a while now… I guess ever since we decided to bake up a couple of twins from scratch using borrowed eggs and my forty-seven- year-old oven. My daughter once called us the “Real Modern Family” – and you know, she’s right. I’m a Southern woman married to a half-Korean, half-Italian/Slovenian Yankee man twelve years my junior; I have two beautiful twenty-something daughters, an arthritic dappled dachshund and a morbidly obese cat. And now, after much thought and consideration — and then funding and injections, vaginal suppositories, and appointments — I have started motherhood all over again. This will be the story of us: our real modern family. Or maybe, more appropriately, our postmodern family. Postmodern, as in “radical reappraisal.” And our story is, indeed, a radical reappraisal of how to make and nurture a family.
Many things have changed since that summer almost three years ago when we began our in-vitro journey… I will do my best to record current happenings, as well as flashbacks to those glory days of post-modern fertilization, pregnancy pillows, and preeclampsia. I’m hoping our story will be an inspiration to those battling the frustrations of infertility, to those navigating the beautiful and rugged territory of twindom, and to those who decide to either start a family or do it all over again at a rather ripe age.
Even as I try to type this, I question why I’m doing it. I have nothing special to say. I’m nothing special. I nearly stop before I’ve begun, but then I think… I’m nothing special, true… but I do have something different to offer. I can’t imagine there are too many forty-nine year olds out there lactating. Not too many women out there with twenty-three years difference between their last baby girl and their most recent baby boys, not too many women who, as my father says, “ran the engine and the caboose when it comes to supplying grandchildren.” Not too many women out there who just suffered through a sixteen-month stint of extreme sleep deprivation. If nothing else, I can be a freak show for people to point at and ridicule. Still, I hope I can inspire a few to give postmodern family planning a go.
There are words I love for their sounds, like pixelated, Appalachian, alchemy.
And names I love for their looks, like Dierdre, Ariadne, Fizzy Dianthus, for instance.
And then there’s phrases I swoon for thanks to texture and taste, like green glass goblin, mist-spangled sea oats, and bumblebees tumbling through wildflower banks.
They all tickle my brainstem like mothwings in incomprehensibly wonderful ways, so I collect them like fireflies, then leave them floating like flotsam in a file — a file I call “poetry snippets” — thoughts fleeting, but recorded, pinned in a dark corner, piled up in heaps of broken images. I round up the parts, construct nothing of substance, then go out and gather some more, flitting through fact and fiction storehouses in my mind, snatching scenes, sketching silhouettes, silent stacks clustered in the cloisters of my laptop:
the dried and pressed blossoms of innocence,
the reclaimed wood of childhood,
the trawled testimonies of trauma,
all the tapestries woven not even half-way…
sonorous symbols, signifying nothing.
I so want to craft these trinkets into treasure… but like a painter who never paints her own house, it seems I’m a writer who never writes her own world.
I want – I need — to give them a home. Is it possible for me to rearrange and repurpose them, strip and paint and polish them ‘til the treasures I’ve stored up adorn every floorboard, enliven each corner and window and door? So, when I’m done, I’ll have erected the coziest, most comfortable little work of art with carefully crafted characters living in whimsy and purpose, surrounded by gleaming pewter sentence sets and winks of wisdom?
Where they’ll flourish and feel at home — my characters, yes, but my readers too?
That’s the prose and poetry I pray I can piece together in this next chapter of my life. A collected space – my favorite kind of space — that visitors will return to year after year with a cup of coffee and some introspection.
I just read a headline from House & Garden UK that says cottagecore has given way to burrowcore. I’d say, they’re speaking my love language.
I’m a lover of little havens full of favorites, both my tribe and my trappings. A good book, a soft throw, a mug of coffee or glass of wine, my family gathered all around is heaven to me. Add soup on the stove or scones in the oven and I will never leave.
I bought into minimalism when we first purchased our house – or as minimalist as I could ever get. I painted nearly every surface alabaster white (which I still love, btw… see my kitchen above), but my favorite room in the house is my office, with its dark bronze walls, books stacked to the ceiling, daybed piled with pillows, and the heavy, muted rug my dear Aunt Jan gave me underfoot.
My truest loves are comfortably cluttered and full of flavor. Always have been, and always will be. I love my home like I love my literature, full of moody tones and blowsy sentences. I love my decor like I love my food, full to bursting with spice and dense layers.
Minimalism is sparse. It feels deconstructed. Like Hemingway details, sharp and dry. Like food plated by a Michelin-starred chef: angle of substance, line of nourishment.
Maximalism, on the other hand, is overwhelming. Too many things competing for attention. See me! Pick me! Exhibitionist energy in big, bold colors, heaps of fussy meringue on display. Like a great big bowl of Eton Mess. A saccharine toothache.
But burrowcore… THAT’s my speed, my flavor, my jam.
It’s introverted, homey, cozy, layered. All soft spaces, lit with lamps and candles and sunny windows. It’s equal parts shadow and sun, forest flavor and fragrant meadow. It’s collected, gathered, connected, maintained. It’s family hand-me-downs, antique shops and internet finds. It’s Beatrix Potter making best friends with Faulkner. It’s comfort food served warm from the stove.
Here’s to burrowcore forevermore.
We’re all Sisters of the Pleiades — limber, almost-deities,
out here dancing with our assets glowing
like the ends
of cigarettes, like
Schiaparelli silhouettes,
our skilled pirouettes and
lithesome fingertips
spinning Fate
in the palms
of our hands.
Sexed-up angels,
winged goddesses
up on our catwalks, we
set the sun to swooning
and the moon to mooning,
but the true secret is…
Fortune and her
kaleidoscopic wheel
— while a fun ride –
is always a strumpet.
And we’re ever one misstep,
one missed rep,
from being tumbled,
then ground to
quintessence
of dust,
just as the next big thing in her slender, goodly frame struts and frets her life up on the wire.
So goes the providence of a songbird.
I loved a lot of things about these Olympics. The dedication of the athletes: the timeless hours spent on ice, the slopes, the weight rooms, the training facilities. I loved the spectacle of opening and closing ceremonies. The routines and runs and games and events. The highlights of the athletes on podiums and the wolfdog on ski-trials.
What I didn’t love is the part where gender became war. Where it became us against them, she against him. If we can’t compete in the rings, then why pit us against each other outside of them?
The locker room joke heard round the world cut me to the quickening place. I mean, isn’t that what was intended?
The jokes on U-terus?
The president took a slice at the slice… and all the men laughed.
Alysa Liu shared a taste of her joy with us this week. Women’s hockey shared communion and love.
Then, men’s hockey came ‘round serving up backwash and bile.
May they all taste the backlash of that.
Since our big meal is Saturday for us this year, and since our tradition of putting up the tree the day-after-Thanksgiving is out the window thanks to the blessing of 3rd round of playoffs, I’ve done something I swore I’d never do. I’ve decorated BEFORE Thanksgiving.
And y’all, it may be blasphemy, but I’m a big convert. Huge. Obsessed.
And I keep looking at insta for new inspo. It’s a dangerous habit.
I’m officially hooked on retro Christmas. I initially couldn’t decide if I wanted midcentury, maximalist, or Christmas Carol quaint. If I should dry orange slices, add old-fashioned tinsel to the tree, sling in some beads, add ribbons and bows..
So I decided to just do it all.
Over the course of the last three days, our house has become a veritable cornucopia of Christmas.
In the kitchen nook, the Canes tree celebrates the season, plus there’s a new, white beauty with my grandmother’s Shiny Brites (salvaged from her basement straight out of the 1950s), and a few beloved ornaments gifted me by my girls.
In the library, there’s the boys’ tree, featuring both homemade and Bug and Bear themed ornaments, all tied together with paper garland.
In the living room, stands the largest and proudest tree of all, with an eclectic mix of blown glass, and this year, vintage bulbs in all their technicolor glory. And yes, I got tinsel!!!! — I love how it shimmies with the least little draft.)
And in the dining room, no tree, but Thanksgiving Boxes stacked to heaven and waiting on my precious loves, and a mixed metal centerpiece with matching chandelier.
Close by, on the mantel, my dearest Aunt Ann’s hand-sculpted A Christmas Carol dolls that she made for me my first year of teaching, and which my beloved Aunt Jan outfitted to perfection.
The porch got a tree too, of course, along with our snowman blow mold.
And the oranges? Well, I’m still figuring out where those will go, but they’re dried, folks, they’re dried.
In the meantime, dawn has draped ribbons of sun and cloud through my backyard pines. She, too, has decorated early.
Soon, laughter and conversation will percolate – a masterpiece of memories in the making – but for now, there is only my coffee and twinkling lights while my favorite ghosts of Thanksgivings past occupy my mind while I bask in the abundance of this Thanksgiving present and praise Him for whom all blessings in the future will surely flow.
Happy Thanksgiving and God bless us, every one.
I first fell in love with Thanksgiving when I went to live with my grandmother in East Tennessee. Until then, it had always been my immediate family gathered at the table for prayer and thanksgiving. A quiet, fellowship thing.
But then, in Tennessee, I found aunts and cousins, uncles and my grandmother, all around a bustling Formica table with aluminum chairs and red vinyl seats. It was all so busy and breathless, in the best possible way.
There were spinning chairs and laughter and games and pump organs and so many pies. And there were people here and there, and here and there, and here and there and everywhere. My heart and belly were overflowing with joy.
That’s where my love for Thanksgiving began.
And here’s where it flourishes now. In my own home as I prep for the arrival of all the chaos and children — now aunts and uncles, many with children of their own, and I, the mother, the grandmother, the matriarch.
I love a full house, full of blessings and thanksgiving.
Though one of my loves is in Miami and can’t be here this week. She’s tending to others as a brilliant badass surgeon and this year is her year to be there on call. And though I’m happy she’s there for her patients, I’m sad she can’t be here with us.
Still, she’s here in my heart, like all the rest who will be here and there and here and there and here and there and everywhere.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Sometimes you want sweet and settled. You want cozy cottages and wood smoke drifting lazily out of chimneys. Fog in the hedgerows and field mice scampering through the meadow.
But you don’t live in a fairytale and you don’t like (no really don’t like) mice. So, you shift your vision a bit. To here, where we are. After all, we need softness here now more than ever.
Your sweet and settled spot can be anywhere you are. Mine is a brick ranch home settled in a wooded lot. There’s a fire in the fireplace and a fog drifting through the half-acre wood. Squirrels scamper through lichened pines.
There’s comfort to be found here. And shelter from life’s storms. There’s a wreath on the door, lights on the porch, and cars soon parked in the half-circle drive.
Here, mornings are damp in November – the air newly cool, the earth still warm and exhaling mist. Groundhogs brewing coffee, so they say.
Now, fill each room with your favorite things: blankets and pillows, trinkets and treasures, plush, scattered rugs, pile after pile of well-loved books. (But only if that’s your thing. It’s most definitely mine.)
But most important of all, bring in your favorite people: family and friends, loved ones, neighbors. Pile on the comfort. Slather the joy. Love them, most tender and true. You wish you could do the same for the rest in this worrisome world. (I get it. Me, too.)
Because outside, leaves tumble and turn. Outside, spiders build nests for the winter. Outside the light gets dimmer and the air gets cold.
But inside there’s cozy. There’s comfort. There’s joy.
It’s not inside the house, though. (I mean it is. You’ve taken such trouble to pile on the posh pillows, after all.)
But the true cozy cottage you’ve built is your heart. Peep those lights in the window, there? The fire in the hearth? That’s all inside you. Along with sweets baking, gratitude singing, memories building.
Inside you, live the ones you love most in this world. So nurture them – and your own sweet, tender self too – so very well in these trying times.
Let thanksgiving stretch, slide soft into her warm, fuzzy slippers, and put the kettle on to boil. For in you, abides comfort and cozy. And joy.
They tiptoe around back,
velvet flanks broad,
flashes of cream tails,
not raised in alarm,
but wagging in whispers,
graceful necks dipping for moss
or lifting for leaves.
I nearly missed them,
these soft, silent, beauties.
Don’t you, too.
Keep an eye out for the
nearly silent beauty,
still nibbling away
at the underside of shade.
It’ll be what keeps us going,
keeps us lifted and searching,
ears twitching, feet pattering
toward goodness and mercy.
Find and follow the tender path.
There’s still softness to be found.
Postmodern names
of prepubescent children
felled by a postmodern problem
of colossal proportions
we refuse to accept.
so, we mourn them in post-shooting
posts with thoughts and prayers
and posthumous praise,
in postmodern funeral repasses
on Facebook, where families and friends
and communities and country
can come together
to wax poetic on
somebody’s children,
somebody’s teachers,
some bodies,
always bodies,
more bodies,
more babies,
posted about
postmortem,
but not fought for
while alive
Heather Peters Candela
postmodernfamilyblog 