people by now a mile or so downtown, because they had been going steadily while she had been trying to gather her courage.”

— “Pillar of Salt” by Shirley Jackson

thank you… her name was Sarah & she really was.

soak it in vegetable oil if you have some, wait up to an hour & gently comb out is what I’m seeing.

“you’ve done a wonderful job raising them.” I answered, “I’m trying,” and she said, “you ARE.” no one talks about how, as an adult, you sometimes only have one person who takes care of you. it was her. I hope she keeps watching over us.

local production of Into the Woods but that the young cast had chosen to play it serious. “how unfortunate!” she said. she asked me about writing (“do you find it cathartic?”) and when discussing a health challenge my children share and how they were learning to accept it, she said,
…

she delighted in me and accepted me as is. in a year that already feels like hell, it’s just too much. she was only 65 and should have had more time, including the retirement she so richly deserved. I saw her just last month and keep remembering our conversation. I told her I had seen a recent
…

“This is Fred, and I am the only one who can see him,” Mike said. “I can talk to him all I want. Go away so I can talk to my best friend.” With that, it was gone.

_______

my 7-year-old wrote this tiny gem today ✨

many blessings on your day today and all of your efforts! break every leg 💗

and descending rays
which I have heard are “God’s fingers”.
if those streams of light form a stairway
to the divine ear,
my prayers
(e.g. “just let us sleep tonight, o.k.?”)
may be too primitive to hear,
but they rise, anyway,
in the name of our brother who wept.

kmh 4/16/25

against the resting yellow fields.
the smell of my mother’s perfume accompanies me home,
along with sightings
of painted horses swishing their tails,
a man on his porch in tattered jeans,
a woman eating a donut from a box
on the sidewalk,
numerous cows and sheep,

so lifeless that I feel I am flying —
but to where?
A blackbird does fly over me,
and opposite of where I must go;
I think I am approaching someone
on all fours waving for help
beside the road
as “Hejira” plays,
but it is only a log,
as much as anything or anyone
is ever “only”

“it’s been a hard year, hasn’t it?”
my father said,
and my daughter said, “it’s been five months.”
I say a prayer for a sun-bathing turtle
in the oncoming lane,
stretching his neck out as we often must
to really take in the sky.
the air is so still that a flag hangs
frozen in time,