Doom and Gloom

why have most days been
 let’s just get to tomorrow
 to find out what’s next?

 
 

Fortify for Forty-five

writing therapy
 is about all i have left
 on Presidents’ Day
 
 
 

What Sundays Have Become

Nearly nineteen years into our marriage, it is time for new furniture. A friend came over the other night, and as the girls piled onto my lap on the sofa claiming their right to me, the wooden leg busted underneath, exposing the reality of its twenty-year-old, hand-me-down state.

Hence, Bruce and I spent four hours today driving between stores, researching cat-scratching deterrents, and deciding on a leather reclining non-power furniture set… that we didn’t buy.

Instead, we continued our twenty-first century journey to the grocery stores. We bought the usual to feed our family of five: avocados and cilantro for our weekly need for fresh guacamole, bananas, apples, and clementines to fill lunch bags, chicken and sushi to make our dinners.

And something more: a stockpile of nonperishables. Beans. Pasta sauce. Brown rice. Cans of soup. Tea. Flour. Canned tomatoes.

Yesterday, my husband of nearly nineteen years and the man so nonviolent that he cringed at the idea of actually killing an elk the one time he went hunting, told me he thought it might be time to buy a gun.

Today, we decided to save our $2000 on furniture because we might need it to stock up on food and provisions before the coming of the war that inevitably will destroy our democracy.

This is what Sundays have become. There is no joy in errand-running, no hope for a new living room set. There is the impending doom of a future that none of us can predict nor look forward to. There are three girls in our home whom I fear will not have a future at all. There are tweets and executive orders and absent investigations and jaw-dropping obstruction.

Soon there will be food shortages. Rations. Militia.

It is all around the bend as we navigate from city to suburb to city on the highways brought to us by progressivism, searching for what we need today, for what we might need tomorrow.

This is what our Sundays have become: me sitting in my nearly-nineteen-year-old recliner, hoping this marriage, this world, my children, will live to see another nineteen years.

Bigger and Better

trading pennies in
 for dollhouses and keurigs…
 girls know how to win!
 

My Size Now

fourteen already?
 (just as long to be a mom)
 may as well be grown
 
 and what a beauty
 with a keen eye, a big heart,
 hope for tomorrow
 
 rests in those hazels,
 that awkward pubescent grin,
 prepared innocence
 
 

This is All I Have For Now

Hope for today: a new student came to my advisory. A Syrian refugee who has been here for 20 days. He could not communicate very well in English, but another newcomer from El Salvador who’s been here for a few months was able to help him with signs and support. He also took pictures on his tablet of everything I handed out and was able to run the words through an app that translated the words to Arabic. And, through the tablet translation, proudly told me at the end of class that he speaks three languages: Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish.

I wonder what else he has stored behind those questioning eyes? I can’t wait to find out. And I’m so glad he made it through the Trumpocracy.

#standwithrefugees #standwithimmigrants

Cookie Rays

sun shines through winter
 warming our corner booth sale
 with childlike joy
 

Light the Flame to Start the Fire

when the blue burns through
a cloudless winter lunch stroll
with wilting climate,

when the Man burns through
a seamless presidency
to bring turmoil,

when cookies burn through
the endless Thin Mint requests
as yet unfulfilled,

we must burn both ends,
light the way to heaven; hell;
until truth burns through
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Heart In Time

day’s small victories:
 video discovery,
 love hearts updated
 
 (these little remnants
 of jam-packed, drama-filled day
 make my heart smile)