This time of day, this golden cast light of low-slung cold sun steeps me in melancholy. I breathe, eyeing the pruned back hydrangea, now bare, gray-brown sticks. The phone rings, and the sound of your voice, far away, trembles with tears, childlike in its vulnerability. Someone is dying, reminds us…

Sorrow is a nest of hair, golden hues dulled, grays, adamant and unruly. When you were little and nursing, you would twine your small fingers in the strands, twirling, twirling, the other hand’s fingers grasping the lobe of my right ear. To tell the truth, it irritated me a bit, …

What if this is Death? Me, here, on this couch, dizzy-breathing, new-age music playing from the TV speakers. Do I know the difference? Yes, I see my children there, (still, so far away), by text, or on blue screen only – Hush – they are thriving and okay. What if…

A palate cleanser Here, by the water, everything is beautiful, sand-crusted swells, tiers blown like moonscape from so much daylight and wind. Inhale. Inhale! Breathe deeply and let salt and hope fill your lungs, watch seagull lift and plummet, again and again, finally coasting above water, silvery treasure clenched in…

They are gutting our bathroom, hauling out the tub where I bathed you both for years, watched with eagle eyes so you might not slip under, made mohawks in your hair from white foam, moved toy dinosaur across ledge growling, “rawr, rawr, rawr,” soaked my sleeves to my elbows. …

A friend challenged me to write an abcedarian poem. Here’s my first stab. A-Z … and back again! Again with this bullshit! Can’t you see that defenseless newborn laboring for breath? Every day, another family broken. Grieving, begging for help.