At the time, I knew little about this devastating illness, but I agreed to meet her later to help brainstorm.

Over coffee, Deb shared the story of HARK-ALS—a small but mighty organization she joined after losing her younger brother to the disease—and the overwhelming financial and emotional challenges faced by families living with ALS.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon, when we held the 2nd Annual HARK-ALS Florida Fundraiser at St. Petersburg’s James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art. I’d helped Deb—who’s now become my big sister (and who claims co-parenting rights for Wolfie)—organize the first event last fall, and this year’s gathering was bigger, warmer, and even more impactful.

For those who attended, it was something special—an event where people shared their time, treasure, and talent, and where a community came together to generously support those in need. Attendees also heard from families, both in person and through video messages, whose lives have been touched and transformed by HARK-ALS.

For both events, Deb asked me to write a poem. Last year’s came easily, drawn from the stories she’d shared. This year, though, I wasn’t sure where to begin—until I read a letter from the wife of someone that Hark-ALS had helped. Her words stayed with me, tender and raw, and from them, the poem wrote itself.

Written from the perspective of a family living with ALS, Love, Heavy as Light began as a letter of gratitude and became a meditation on caregiving’s paradox—how love, hope, and tenderness can feel both heavy and luminous. It reflects on a single moment of freedom—a breath without machinery, a glimpse of wholeness—and honors the quiet, steady hands that make such moments possible.

The inspiration came from this passage in her letter:

ALS, a thief of movement and breath, has rewritten the script of our lives in ways we could never have imagined. Yet even in the face of its unyielding progression, there are moments—precious, fleeting—that remind us of the beauty of normalcy, of the simple joys that once seemed ordinary but now feel extraordinary.

Thanks to the incredible support of HARK Inc., and their decision to purchase a lift for our vehicle, Rocky has been able to experience one of those moments. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, he was able to transfer into our car with ease, breathe freely without his BiPAP, and drive through our neighborhood. It was a moment of liberation—a whisper of the life we once knew—and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

If you’d like to learn more about the incredible work that HARK-ALS is doing—or to help support families living with ALS—you can learn more at:

https://hark-als.org/

Love, Heavy as Light

In the stillness that hums
through each day—
where breath is labored
and silence presses,
heavy as breath itself—
kindness leans toward us.

It bends low,
a hand at the small
of the back—
steadying,
lifting,
proof we are held.

ALS has rewritten us.
Every movement measured,
every breath bargained.
A thief moving slow as dusk
through the rooms of our lives.

Yet even a thief
cannot take
the way sunlight spills
on familiar streets,
or the hum of tires
bearing us outward
into the world.

Because some choose
to see us,
we are granted moments—
a lift beyond the chair’s weight,
a spirit remembering itself.

That day, he drove.

No mask.
No machine.
Air rising in his lungs.

The light in his gaze—
a door swung open
to memory,
to the man I love,
strong, as he’s always been.

The gift was not metal or motor,
but freedom.

The gift was seeing him whole.

We carry this kindness,
lantern-lit in trembling hands,
each step guided
by their hallowed gift—
hope, steady as breath.

Love,
heavy as light.

After sitting with the question, the only word I could offer was presence. For four weeks I was simply there — on trains and tracks, with family and old friends, with myself. Plans shifted, days unfolded, and I didn’t measure or hold. I just stayed.

This poem is what remains.

Four weeks on trains—
curving tracks, fields unfolding,
mile by mile.

I walked the days, unhurried;
let the sky keep its own weather,
let time take its own pace.

Some plans dissolved quietly;
others arrived, unbroken.
I counted nothing.
I carried nothing.

I was present—fully.
in conversations softening,
in silences steadying,
in the small weight of my breath.

I left lighter.
I returned more open.
Not escape,
but staying.

The journey does not end—
it waits each time I breathe,
rails humming beneath me still.

Instead of revisiting a specific piece from the past, today is more about revisiting the past in this new piece. Having eased myself gently into retirement earlier this year, I decided to take a month long trip home to the UK.

Besides visiting loved ones (family and old friends, spread across the country), I decided to get a Eurail pass, and visit the northernmost, eastern-most, southernmost, and westernmost points of the British rail network. I wrote this as made my way to the final compass point of my trip, Holyhead, which is in North Wales.

Steel on Steel

Sheffield first—not on the timetable,
but in how my feet remembered
crossing a street
after forty-five years.

Once, it was Christmas with my mum—
department store windows burning soft,
queues of children
restless and cold,
waiting for Santa.

Back then, the only trams I knew
stood frozen in Crich—
polished relics of another world.
Now they hum through Sheffield’s streets,
and in other cities too—
what was old,
is new again.

The train hushes me forward,
steel on steel,
shuddering dust from memory.

By rail, the Peak District reveals
how its villages link—
beads on a string
I’d never seen unrolled.

Heather in bloom,
bees working the air,
bilberry-stained fingers,
the sugar-sweet drift
from a patient ice cream van
still keeping its post.

One night,
in a pub with my ex-wife,
the music left no room for sitting.
We danced for hours,
laughing at the years between—
friends again.
Grinning when the same chorus caught us.

And then—
the long view:

top deck of an open bus,
wind lifting the weight of decades,
land unspooling
like pages I’d forgotten were mine—

countryside, city,
faces gone,
faces kept—

all held
in the rhythm of the train,
and the quiet certainty
of having come home,
the train still moving.

We’ve built and shared tools. We’ve hosted workshops on the power of storytelling. We’ve created space for reflection, connection, and truth-telling. And now, we’re witnessing the impact of women—and the allies who support them—speaking their truths, bravely and in their own words.

This week, we held our first-ever DamesTalk Open Mic Night. It was filled with courage, vulnerability, and the kind of resonance that stays with you. It won’t be our last.

I’d written this piece ahead of the event—just in case. I wasn’t sure I’d share it. But when the time came, I was asked to read. And in doing so, I found myself standing more fully in my own space between.

This piece was my offering that night. I’m sharing it here too, in case you’re in that in-between—waiting, loosening, becoming.

If this resonates, I invite you to explore Great Dames—now in its 16th year—and DamesTalk, where stories like yours are welcome, heard, and honored.

The Space Between

There’s a breath
I didn’t know I was holding.
For most of my life.

I thought tension was normal.
That care meant contortion.
That love was something you proved
by what you were willing to give up.

But lately—
in the space between
who I was
and who I’m becoming—
I’ve learned to stop holding my breath.

Not all at once.
But in slow,
almost accidental sighs.
Like loosening the grip on a rope
you’ve held so long,
you forgot it was cutting you.

Some versions of me were survival.
Some, performance.
Some were just a child
trying to earn
what was already mine.

I’m not angry about that anymore.
Well—
not always.

There’s grace in the middle.
And that’s where I stop disappearing.

These days—
I move slower.
Ask questions
that don’t beg to be answered.
Say “no”
without explaining.
Say “yes”
without permission.

Let silence be
what it is.

Because in the space between
what I clung to
and what I can’t quite see yet—
I’ve found myself
not needing to be
so easily explained.

There’s more of me now.

And less I need to prove.

Cognac

The sound of gurgling water
And that late summer sun
Lazily setting on the horizon
An unfinished picnic
Plates hurriedly piled together

The sound of children
Off in the distance
Their happy voices
Carrying on the breeze
Peals of laughter
and occasional whoops of joy

And as for that glorious smell in the air
The "share of the angels", they call it
Intoxicating in its perfume
A piece of heaven, right here on Earth
Pinch me, am I dreaming?
Is this just a memory?
Or a premonition of things to come

By the river, bare feet dangling in the water
Sit a couple who look familiar
Oblivious to their surroundings
They only have eyes for each other
I smile at sharing their secret
Walking on, I leave them to their happiness

Sometimes, a piece you’ve written stays with you—not just because of what it captured, but because of what it still carries.

This poem began as a reflection on the moment I first held my daughter. But yesterday, on her 40th birthday, I wanted to revisit it—not to rewrite the past, but to reframe it. To speak not only to the newborn I once cradled, but to the woman she’s become.

The story is still the same. But the meaning runs deeper now.

Still Held

Forty years ago today, I met you for the first time.
You arrived three weeks early—impatient, it seemed, even then to begin.

I was 24—young and idealistic. I didn’t yet understand how a single moment could upend everything I thought I knew—before you, and after.

I remember being overwhelmed—joy, relief, awe, and something quieter I didn’t yet have words for.
A nurse pointed me to the paper towel dispenser. I drifted over, still watching you—the tiny someone who had just shifted my gravity.

When I returned to your side, I was trailing half a roll behind me.
Everyone laughed. So did I.
But even then, I sensed it: some bonds don’t break. They just change shape.

Looking back, I feel such tenderness for the man I was in that moment.
I didn’t know how quickly certain seasons would vanish.
I didn’t know how deeply I’d miss the moments I never captured.
I didn’t know how few memories you’d have with my dad—how much I’d wish I’d preserved.

But here’s what I know now—what I want you to carry today:

You were loved from your very first breath.
Not with a love that flickers, but one that holds steady—rooted, growing, here.

You’ve lived through things I never could have imagined in that hospital room.
You’ve broken and rebuilt. Faltered and found your footing.
Quietly. Fiercely. And through it all, you’ve become someone I am endlessly proud of.

Life hasn’t made it easy. But you’ve met it with grit, with depth, with that quiet power that’s always been yours.
You are more resilient than you know.
You always have been.

We were ready for you from the start—hopeful, grounded, and fully present.
And while time has stretched and tested the bond between us, it never frayed.

At the other end of that cord—always—was someone who would be there.
Still is.

Here’s the poem I wrote for you.
Just a small moment. But one I’ve carried for forty years.

The Cords That Bind

You were early to this world
Three weeks early
Knowing you now
I feel that you were
impatient to get going

Nothing prepares you
for how parenthood feels
As the midwife weighed
and measured you
I took in your perfection

My tears of joy and relief
threatened to become a flood
Noticing, a nurse took my arm
“Paper towels are over there,” she said
Pointing to a wall-mounted dispenser

My vision was so blurry
That it seemed to take a while
for me to reach them
But it was probably more that
I couldn’t stop looking at you

Returning to the bedside
I was met with laughter
After the earlier anxiety
Of your rushed delivery
It felt so very welcome

Failing to notice that the paper towel
was one long continuous roll
I was still connected to the dispenser
And just for a moment
I had my own umbilical cord

Last week, I wrote about snow.
About the boy who didn’t let go.
About silence that stuck to skin like cold.

That story became a poem.
The poem became a sonnet.
Same thread—pulled tighter with each stitch.

It didn’t want to resolve.
It listened. Compressed. Waited.

The rope’s still in my hand.
But this time, I get to decide why.

Recursive Text

Not all that shaped me ever spoke aloud;
Some truths arrived in silence, sharp and near—
A look withdrawn, a nod that disallowed,
A warmth withheld, a smile that drew too near.

I learned to vanish while I wore a grin,
To bend my voice to fit a safer tone.
They called it strength—this vigilance within—
But praised a mask I never chose to own.

The weight I carried passed as something earned,
A second spine of shame I named as pride.
I made my flesh obedient and burned
The parts that once rebelled or asked or cried.

I speak—but still forget to breathe between,
Unbecoming all they said I had to mean.

This piece is recursive in more than form.

It began as Chicken Run—a funny memory of a frozen field and a sled that didn’t stop. That essay was stripped down into Everything Was White Until It Wasn’t, a flashback on inherited silence.
That memory shaped Unbecoming, a poem about what we carry without knowing.
This sonnet is its final compression—
distilled, unresolved, still holding the thread.

Call it recursive.
Call it memory.
Call it practice.

In yesterday’s Flashback Friday, I revisited a story I wrote four years ago—about a sledding mishap that ended with me breaking through the crust of a snow-covered lake of frozen chicken shit.

It was meant to be funny. And in many ways, it still is.
But after I posted the new version, I found myself reflecting on how different it felt from the original.

The first one was polished, practiced. It kept things tidy.
It told the story without really telling it.

Later, I read a chapter from Kathy Parker’s Bless the Daughters, about the mother wound and inherited patterns. It landed hard.
I ran both versions of my story—and that chapter—through ChatGPT and asked what it saw.

What came back wasn’t just analysis. It was recognition.

• Hyper-independence as survival.

• Emotional attunement as protection.

• Performing for love.

• Losing myself when I finally let someone in.

I got it—the words, the logic, how it all fits together.
But sometimes dry, almost clinical language needs to be translated into something more embodied.

That’s where this poem comes in.

A reckoning with all that wasn’t said.

Unbecoming

Not everything that shaped me
was spoken aloud.
Some truths were absorbed
in silence—
in glances that warned,
in warmth that never came,
in recognition never bestowed.

Holding on
without ever asking why.
Gripping hard
to prove my worth.
That I mattered.
That I belonged.

It’s not disappearing
when it earns you praise.
Learning to vanish
in just the right ways—
muting your voice,
swallowing your needs,
leaving all your best parts
in other rooms.

Patterns not mine,
but living in and upon me,
like a second skin.
Following rules
I never agreed to.
Carrying weight
misread for love.

Some truths
still won’t be spoken.
Abandoning myself
to delay the sentence.
Mistaking kindness
for danger—
and misnaming it instinct.
Carrying shame
like a second spine.

It’s not about blame.
It’s about ending the performance.
Mouthing: never again.
This ends with me.

I want to hear
what I silenced—
the voice I muted,
the ache I buried,
the wounds I smoothed over,
the child I abandoned
to stay safe.

I won’t perform to be loved.
I won’t vanish to be chosen.
I won’t wrap myself in silence
anymore.

This isn’t a declaration.
It’s a practice.
Slowly, steadily—
unbecoming.

Unbecoming the man
that no one came back for.
Still here.
Still learning
what to hold,
and what to release.

Some articles don’t demand a response. They plant something quieter. A resonance. A recognition. And later—sometimes days, sometimes longer—they surface again, not as argument or summary, but as poem.

I read a piece about why many empaths choose solitude. It described the quiet violence of absorbing too much—of scanning rooms, softening tone, bracing for someone else’s storm. It spoke to what happens when peace becomes not a preference, but a boundary. When solitude isn’t retreat, but reclamation.

I didn’t write a reaction. I wrote a poem. This one.

Peace, as Boundary

Some silences
return the breath—
held too long.

He reads a shrug
like scripture.
Catches a glance mid-air
and braces before it lands.

He mistook stillness for safety.
Silence for care.

He thought that was love—
to be the buffer.
To swallow mood swings
like pills meant for someone else.
To dim his own light—
so no one had to turn their eyes.
To be still
while others erupted.

Charm was the bait.
Then came
the redactions,
the revisions of guilt,
a love
that kept score
and made softness a fault.

Even a lighthouse tires
when no one seeks the shore.

He gave patience like currency.
Swallowed his truth
one syllable at a time.

He shrank his presence
so their quiet wouldn’t crack.
Left jokes unfinished.
Leaving the punchline
to die in his throat.

Still—he stayed.
Thought being needed
meant lessening himself
to fit the shape
defined by someone else.

But even that gave way.
Not with a crash.
With a quiet decision:
Not this.
Not again.

Now—
he shapes his silence.
Not out of fear,
but as both boundary
and stewardship.

The kettle sings.
His chest unclenches
at the sound of no doors slammed.
No sighs
strung tight like tripwire.

He no longer reads the room.
He writes it.

There’s no one to calm.
No moods to manage.
No eggshells.

The ground
forgives his weight.

He doesn’t rush into love.
He walks.
Measures each step
by how steady
he still feels after.

He wants love
like a porch swing.
Not a stage cue.
Just earth—
his bare feet meeting it.

Because this man,
this quiet man,
knows:
peace is not the absence of conflict—
peace, as boundary.

It’s a body reclaimed.
It’s a home.

He does not wait to be saved.
Just seen.
Just asked.
Just met.

Let them come gently,
or not at all.

There’s always a third.

Sometimes it’s a person.
Sometimes a ghost.
Sometimes just the version of yourself you’re still trying to save.

Triangulation isn’t geometry. It’s choreography—
a dance of avoidance mistaken for connection.
One person reaching, one retreating, one pretending the pattern is fate.

You learn how to lean just far enough to be touched
without risking collapse.
You tell yourself love can stretch across delay,
across silence,
across unspoken grief.
That giving without asking is grace.

You call the absence circumstantial.
The silence, mutual.
You forget how to ask in your own language.

Sometimes the third isn’t the person you’re with.
It’s the one you're still apologizing to.
Or the one who taught you to mistake scarcity for love.

You love like a triangle not because you want to—
but because your nervous system memorized the script.
You keep casting new actors in old roles,
wondering why the lines still sting.

You thought you were the one left waiting.

And you were.
But someone was waiting for you, too.

While you stood at the locked door of someone else's silence,
someone else stood outside yours,
knocking.

You didn’t hear it.
The house was too full—
of echoes,
of rehearsed apologies,
of withheld goodbyes.

What was done to you became the shape you offered.
Not out of malice.
Out of muscle memory.
Out of the reflex that says: this is what closeness feels like—
distant, familiar, survivable.

You called it space.
You called it honesty.
But it was still a version of vanishing.
Still a way of holding someone close enough
to be seen,
but not close enough to stay.

You didn’t know, then,
that you were fluent in almost.
That you had mastered the choreography of leaving,
even while staying.

And maybe you meant well.
But kindness without clarity is still a fog.
It softens the blow—
but blurs the edge
until no one can name what cut them.

You weren’t the villain.
But you weren’t only the wounded either.

You were the middle note in a song that hurt both ways.

Remorse doesn’t arrive with a crash.
It comes soft—
like someone else’s voice in your mouth.

You’re mid-sentence when you hear it—
a line that once broke you
slipping out in your own tone,
toward someone who didn’t see it coming.

It lands like dropped silverware—
not loud,
but unmistakable.

And there it is:
not guilt,
but recognition.

You didn’t mean to withhold.
You thought you were protecting them.
From your uncertainty.
From the grief you hadn’t yet named.
From the mess of not knowing what you wanted.

But you see it now:
how your careful words became riddles,
how your silence felt like a test,
how your affection rang like a promise
you never meant to keep.

You thought you were being honest.
But honesty without responsibility
is just another kind of manipulation.

And the worst part?
You understand exactly how they felt.
Because you’ve been there.

You didn’t set out to be the person who said just enough to keep someone hoping.
You just hadn’t stopped hoping yourself.

You were still carrying someone else’s ghost—
and left someone else holding yours.

she said
you’re safe here

but her body
was already leaving

you mistook silence
for care

absence
for space

you gave
she watched

you waited
she drifted

she asked for nothing
and took everything

you apologized
before feeling

you stopped asking
called it growth

you became fluent
in almost

she called it
peace

you said yes
even when it
sounded like leaving yourself

she said
don’t take this
the wrong way

you learned
there is no right way
to need

she left the door open
just enough

you stayed
for the version of you
she almost saw

you called it love
because naming it
would break you

she said
i never promised

you nodded
still holding
the echo

you don’t ask now
but you still listen

you know
where safe does not live

it’s not a wall
it’s the shape of staying

not a door closing
but a way of choosing
what gets to come in
and what doesn’t

it’s the pause
before I say yes
because I want to—
not because I’m afraid
of what happens if I don’t

it’s me
not shrinking
not twisting
not performing
just
me
no longer leaving myself
to stay close to someone else
just less willing
to go missing
in the name of connection

it’s how I protect the part of me
still soft
still learning
still healing
from the times
I didn’t know I could ask for more

it’s how my shoulders stop bracing
how I stop scanning the room
before I speak

and I love you
from here
it’s not a wall
it’s the way back to myself

Maybe bravery doesn’t come roaring in.
Maybe it slips in smaller —
quiet as a breath
you didn’t even notice you were holding.

A glance held
just a little longer.
A hand
not ready to let go.
A story
you almost didn’t tell.
A trembling yes,
already there,
waiting to be heard.

We wouldn’t need much.
A porch light left burning.
A room with chairs that don’t match.
Enough space
to show up half-open,
half-unsure —
to tremble a little —
and still be held.

We’d sit together
with our unfinished stories,
our bruised hopes,
each one quietly finding its place —
spilling and filling the spaces between us.

Grief beside laughter,
neither asking to be explained.

Bravery would pass between us —
not declared,
not demanded,
just caught
and carried,
like warmth cupped gently
between open hands.

Someone would crack —
their truth slipping free
from the carefulness.

Someone else would catch it,
steady it,
and hold it —
precious, still burning.

And something would shift.
Not loudly.
But surely.
Permanently.

You might not even call it bravery at first.
It might just feel —
like breathing easier,
like no longer being alone.

We wouldn’t leave certain.
We wouldn’t leave whole.
We wouldn’t leave bulletproof —
but we would leave braver.

Taking each other's trembling yeses,
weaving them into our own —
sparks to light
the quiet flames within us.

As flames find flames,
building,
burning,

small yeses rising,
coalescing,
consuming the darkness —

giving hope once more,
lighting the way.

P.S. Also available as a podcast.

When I wrote the following poem, I didn’t know how thirsty I was.

I thought I was simply settling into a new city, exploring new rituals, starting fresh. But with hindsight, it’s painfully clear: I’d been in the wilderness for a long time.
I’d been on my own for nearly seven years, still quietly tethered to a former relationship I hadn’t yet released.
I didn’t see it then—but my hunger for a new start was visceral.

I remember scanning local listings—cold plunges, kirtan, guided meditations—
drawn to anything that felt like movement. Like aliveness.
I was a water diviner, and my hazel rod was alive with longing.

I was looking for home.
And somehow, Saint Pete said: here.

This poem arrived in that space—not polished, not planned. Just present.
For anyone who’s wandered long enough to forget what it feels like to be found—this one’s for you.

Original Intro (July 2022)

Since I started to think about relocating to Florida last fall, I haven’t really been writing much poetry. Getting my house ready to put on the market, and working to simplify my life and skinny down my worldly belongings took a lot more bandwidth than I anticipated.

It’s only now that I realize just how much I was sheltered through multiple corporate relocations.

I’ve been in Florida for four weeks now, and last weekend, I was finally reunited with my belongings (my tale of scammy moving companies holding my stuff hostage will have to wait for another day), and Saint Petersburg feels more like home every day.

There is something about this city that is magical.
Sure, it’s known as Sunshine City, and I live just a short walk from the Bay, where I get to see dolphins and manatees.
Yes, it is full of breathtaking murals, great museums, and punches well above its weight when it comes to great restaurants and coffee shops, etc.
For me, it’s more about the people who are drawn here (in the words of Steve Jobs, they think differently), and the intentional community that they are building.
Finding my way to that, and being welcomed into it, is fast making this home for me.

This morning, like most mornings, I was up at dawn, ready to welcome the new day. Wolfie and I have ended up in a leafy residential area with a lake and a fountain, and we’ve just been watching the world go by.
I started thinking about how I feel different here, and why that is, and this poem decided to present itself.

Open

Starting anew
I seek out age-old truths
Stripped down and pared back
We are ready for each other

Free to wander
I search for new rituals
Cornerstones
to build a new life upon

Rejecting complacency
Renouncing convention
Embracing my ability to choose
I choose joy and wonder

Shifting and flowing
I feel agile yet grounded
My new life calls me
And I am open

Also available in podcast form, either here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Enjoy!

here

This one came in pieces. A boy. A tin of crayons. A fridge humming in the dark. Oh, and yes, a superfluous vowel or two.

I didn’t set out to write it. It found its shape slowly—quiet gestures, held silences, small things that carry weight.

Lately I’ve been leaning into that space between poetry and prose. Letting rhythm do the heavy lifting. Letting structure loosen.

That gave me permission to leave some things unsaid.

This is a quiet story.
But it stayed with me. Maybe it will with you, too.

Where the Colour Lives

Where the Colour Lives

He draws in the quiet.
His crayons live in a biscuit tin under the bed,
alongside his other treasures.

They used to come in a box that promised
72 colours—
but he’s lucky if there are twenty now.
None of them whole.

Reds worn to nubs.
Blues still long.
Yellows and oranges
conspicuously absent.

Tonight,
it’s a sun with a face.

The smile comes out crooked,
but he doesn’t start over.

He draws the eyes wide—
how hers used to look
when she laughed.

He’s not sure
she laughs like that anymore.

But this is the version
he wants to remember.

The one
he still hopes
might come back.

He tiptoes to the kitchen.
The hallway light is off.
The fridge hums.

He listens.

Everything feels paused.

He adds the drawing to the door,
tucking it beneath a magnet
shaped like a cow.

There are others.
He doesn’t count.

Just presses it flat.

The drawing stays where he puts it.
That feels like enough.

There are glow-in-the-dark stars
on his ceiling.

Some have fallen.
He doesn’t mind.

He remembers
where they were.

Lately,
she forgets things.

Toothbrushes in odd places.
Towels still damp at night.
Once,
a spoon in the bathroom sink.

Sometimes she smiles
too wide.
Sometimes
not at all.

He knows not to ask.

That night,
the bathroom light stays on.

He hears her crying.

Quietly—
like she’s wanting,
and not wanting,
to be heard.

He sits on the edge of the bed,
feet not touching the floor.

A faint scent of shampoo
lingers in the hallway.

When all is silent again,
he lies back
and watches the stars.

One is missing
above the window.

He closes his eyes
and puts it back
with his mind.

In the morning,
the kitchen feels cooler.

One of her slippers
is by the door.
The other
is gone.

The fridge is nearly bare.

No magnets.
No drawings.

Just one sheet of paper
in the centre—
creased,
like it had been
in a pocket.

It’s the sun
with the face.

Smoothed.
Flattened.
Held in place
with Blu-Tack.

She’s by the window.
Looking,
but not really seeing.

A cup of tea
sits by the sink—
half full,
gone cold.

Neither of them
says anything.

But there’s a sandwich
in a Ziploc bag.
Crusts cut off.

A square of foil
folded around
a chocolate biscuit.

Her hand lingers slightly
as she passes them to him—
just enough
to feel.

He takes them
without speaking.

At school,
he unwraps the foil slowly.

It smells faintly
of butter
and hand soap.

He eats the sandwich.
Wraps the biscuit
back in foil.

Saves it—
like a secret.

That night,
he draws
a moon
with its eyes closed.

He leaves it
on the table.

I wrote this poem on my dad’s birthday, four years after we’d celebrated his last. We spent that day together in the hospice, where he would die just eight days later. I was thirty-two then, and not yet ready to accept that everything was about to change.

Now I’m sixty-four. Double the age I was that day. And I’m about the age he was when he first got sick.

Over the years, I’ve heard the same thing again and again—sometimes casually, sometimes with striking clarity: “You’re your father’s son.”

And I am. I move through life the way he did. He was my role model for what a man should be—warm, kind, thoughtful, generous with what he had, especially when someone else had less. He showed love by doing, by giving, by showing up.

I’m so grateful for that. For him.

This is the poem I wrote to remember that day—and everything it still means.

Last Birthday

It was four years ago today that we celebrated your last birthday together.
You were sixty-eight and dying a slow and dignified death of cancer.
I was thirty-two and reluctantly accepting that there would be no miracle.

I sat on the edge of your bed in the hospice, a chair being too distant.
I held your hand and we shared the silence together,
The sound of Hannah opening and reading your cards the only punctuation.

I noticed things so clearly that day — colours, fragrances, sounds.
It was as if I was seeing, smelling, and hearing for two —
That I was all too aware that your senses were departing you.

As I walked across the car park, I tried to absorb everything around me.
I felt like a bird, gathering food for its young.
I wanted to feed you all the beauty that was in the world.
I wanted to make you strong again.

It was a glorious late summer day, much as it is today.
I remember thinking that winter would soon be coming.
I started to worry, about you falling or slipping.

I thought of how cold you’d been the previous winter,
How no amount of heat had been able to warm you.
Then I heard my own voice inside my head,
Telling me that you wouldn’t have to endure that again.

Roz had asked if she should bring the camera that morning.
I’d said no, that I wanted to be able to remember you as you’d lived —
Full of smiles, full of love, full of life —
Not as you were dying, so tired and weary.

I regretted that decision the moment I saw you.
I wanted to capture every second you had left.
Every moment we had left to share together.

I started to tell you how beautiful it was outside.
I so desperately wanted you to see it, to feel it.
I asked if you would like to go out in the gardens —
That I could push you in a wheelchair.

I was worried that you might say no.
But you said that you would like that.

I asked Roz and Hannah if they wanted to come with us,
But they knew and I knew that this time was for you and me alone.

As I helped you into the wheelchair, covering your legs with a warm blanket,
I thought again how things go around in circles —
How your cancer had slowly returned you to being the helpless infant,
As it had turned me into the nurturing parent.

Just at that moment, I wished so desperately
That our roles could be reversed again.

The hospice gardens were at their peak.
As we followed the little paths between the rose bushes,
I kept stopping to point out the perfect blooms.
And you told me that you could smell their scent.

I asked you how you felt.
You said the sun felt good on your skin.
I said that we’d have to do this again.
But we both knew that we wouldn’t.

We got to the centre of the rose garden — a circular opening,
Filled with hardwood benches and surrounded by rose-covered arches.
I parked your wheelchair alongside a bench and I sat down beside you.

I took your hand in mine and we gripped each other so tightly.
I started to cry, softly at first — then it became uncontrollable.
Tears flooded down my cheeks and onto my chest and lap.
Pain-filled sobs escaped from my lips.

You gripped me tightly and said,
“I know lad, I know.”

We sat there for the longest time, together in our silence.

Then a nurse who was wheeling another patient around came over.
She’d been watching us together and asked if we minded her taking our picture.
She said she could just see so much love between us.

I put my arm around you and hugged you tight.
I poured all my love for you into that picture.
I wanted the whole world to know how much I loved you.
I wanted them to know what a wonderful person you were.

We didn’t stay out there much longer.
We’d said what we needed to say, in actions if not in words.
I knew things would be different after that day — and they were.

Your body grew weaker, but it wasn’t just that.
You were so very tired and weary.
I think you had accepted your fate —
Just as I had finally accepted that there are some things love cannot overcome.

It was four years ago today that we celebrated your last birthday together.
Today I celebrate it on my own.

The feeling of loss doesn’t seem to get any easier.
I’ve just got more used to living with it.

What has remained easy is the way you make me smile.
So many times, I’ll stop in my tracks as I remember something funny —
And I’ll pause and say,
“I love you, Dad.”

Later today, I’ll be co-facilitating a Writing Workshop for the Great Dames community, an organization that I care deeply about, where I serve on the Board and proudly show up as an ally. As a pre-workshop assignment, we sent out three prompts and encouraged attendees to bring reflections or a short piece inspired by one of them.

Rather than simply introducing the exercise, I decided to try it myself.

Here’s the prompt I chose:

The Day I Took My Power Back: Write about a moment when you drew a boundary, made a bold decision, or walked away from something that no longer served you. What changed when you stopped asking for permission?

And here’s what emerged.

There are so many ways we learn to shape ourselves—quietly, unconsciously, and often long before we understand what we’re doing.
This piece isn’t a confession or a conclusion.
It’s a remembering.
A slow unwinding.
A return.

Vulnerability Is My Superpower

I used to believe
one had to be easy to love.

Quiet,
unassuming.
Never seeking too much.
Grateful for whatever was given.

Learning early
to soften my edges,
unconsciously reading the rooms,
I shaped and reshaped myself accordingly.

Becoming someone
easier to be with.
Someone easier to love.

Becoming adept
at holding everything in.
It took a lifetime
to learn how to let anything go.

Then came the quiet undoing—
not all at once.
More slowly deflating
than collapsing.
More steadily unraveling
than dissolving.

Sands shifting
beneath my feet,
revealing
the myriad shapes
I’d shifted into.

In seeking safe harbor,
those intuited as safe
wore no armor
and carried no weapons—
concealed or otherwise.

Not rushing to prove or explain.
Their questions flowed, unfiltered,
while making space for mine.

Vulnerability—
not a curse,
but a quiet blessing.

Not a weakness
to be denied,
but a strength
worth learning to lean on,
learning to live within.

Truth’s essence
speaking through presence.

Here I am.

Not polished.
Not hardened.
But tender, open.

Not certain.
Still becoming.

And maybe,
in a world that teaches
love is earned
by reconfiguring ourselves,

the most radical thing
we can do
is

embody who we are.

A Light Left On

Some words are built to confront.
To draw a line.
To hold it.
To ask what side you're really on.

Others arrive softer.
They sit beside you for a minute,
say nothing,
and somehow still speak.

Not everything I write is meant to land loud.
Some of it lands quiet—
on purpose.

If you’ve come here for the essays,
thank you.
Truly.

But I write poems, too.
Not often.
Not loudly.
Just when the moment
asks for a different kind of shape.

Substack doesn’t always send them.
No inbox alert,
no drumroll.

So think of this
as a nudge.
Or a note.
Or a light
left on.

If you’re in a place
where the quieter things help,
you should know—

the poems live here:
https://www.brittleviews.com/s/poetry

Recent Poems

Before the Roar
About the moment just before we move. The breath that makes the sound possible.

Not in Rage, but in Resonance
We don’t have to burn hot to hold power. Sometimes presence is its own protest.

That Someone Would
A poem about staying soft in a world that wants you armored.

Only the Light
When truth shows up looking nothing like what you hoped—and exactly what you need.

They won’t show up in your inbox every time.
But they’re there when you need them.
Quiet doesn’t mean absent.

—
Robert

It started with the weight—
the slow, smothering fog
after the votes were cast.
A silence so loud
it made doubt feel like gravity.

I scrolled in the dark,
phone burning in my palm,
my breath shallow with knowing.
Some of us screamed inside.
Some froze.
And we watched
as the house we thought was ours
began rearranging itself
without permission.

We whispered:
Is this how it ends?

We braced.
The air felt thinner.
Even time seemed to hold back.
Something quiet in me said: go.

But endings rarely come all at once.
They arrive in slivers,
in the small absences
we agree to tolerate.

And then—
Saturday came.

Feet on pavement.
Signs in hand.
Not a roar,
but a pulse.
The sound of waking up.

Not a wave,
but a shift in the current.
Not a flood,
but the pressure behind the dam.
Just enough to feel
that the stillness
was no longer still.

They say
you don’t need everyone—
just enough
to lean toward the breaking point
at the same time.

This isn’t spectacle.
It’s precision.
Not a scream,
but the collective inhale
before the shatter.

This—
this is what comes
before the roar.

Three million hearts
beating in rhythm,
writing resolve
on cardboard and sidewalks,
in the footnotes of headlines
still trained to look away.

This moment
isn’t heroic.
It’s cumulative.
It builds in whispers,
marches in margins,
gathers in the space
between surrender and decision.

Even gravity
can be tilted
if you lean long enough.
Even silence
can be broken
by breath alone.

To act
when apathy is easier—
that is its own defiance.
To keep showing up—
that is the work.

This is not prophecy.
It’s pressure.

Not inevitability—
but ignition.

The plan is in motion.
So is the resistance.

We don’t need to be everything.
We need to be enough.

So the question lingers,
soft and precise:

Will you move with us, before the roar?
Or will you wait
to see which silence
rewrites the story
you were meant to break?

🌀 This piece is part of a connected trio on hope, presence, and quiet resistance. You can read the full arc here:

This Is What Hope Looks Like / Not in Rage, But in Resonance / Before the Roar

Filed under poetry, but rooted firmly in Defiance.

It started with a honk.
Then another.
Then a third.
Each one closer than the last,
until they began to build—
a rhythm,
a signal,
an opening note in a larger song.

I wasn’t ready yet,
but something in me
was already moving.

From my window,
I felt it rising.
Not just sound,
but momentum.

We picked our spot
where the cars had to stop—
where you could meet someone’s eyes
before they had time
to look away.

Most were loudly supportive—
honks, cheers,
thumbs-up through open windows.
Some stared ahead,
pretending not to see us.
One man drove past
slowly,
flipping us off
without ever turning his head.

Across the street—
a woman with a walker,
clutching her sign
like it mattered.
Because it did.

I crossed over.

I’d assumed she lived there—
outside the senior living facility,
walker in one hand,
sign in the other.

But no.
She’d come from miles away.
A friend had brought her
and gone to get the car.

“It was a challenge,” she said,
“but it was worth it.”

She told me about another woman—
a veteran
who’d stood behind her earlier,
first protest of her life.
Made her presence felt,
then went home.

Sometimes,
that’s enough.

Most signs that day
read like stages of grief.
Mine said:
This is what hope looks like.

Another woman noticed.
Her sign said something similar.
She smiled,
stood beside me for a moment.
“We might be the only ones,” she said.

Maybe we were.
Or maybe we’re just further along.
Not done feeling it—
but past the point
of waiting to act.

There were a lot of young people—
fifteen to twenty-five,
excited, vocal,
sensing they were part of something
bigger than themselves.

At the other end—
sixty, seventy,
even eighty year-olds.
Resolute.
Steady.
Still showing up.

Missing were the ones in the middle.
I noticed that.
And I felt it.

I don’t know why.
I’ve seen it before—
at a protest for Ukraine,
though that was on a weekday.
Maybe it was work then.
But this was Saturday.

Was it choice?
Exhaustion?
One more thing
to be tuned out?

I don’t know.
But I keep thinking about it.

I don’t need permission anymore.
Now I offer it.
Now I make space
for others to find their voice
in their own time.

Yesterday,
protest didn’t sound like shouting.
It sounded like a hum—
the quiet buzz of connection
between strangers
who couldn’t not speak.

Hear us roar.
Not in rage,
but in resonance.

🌀 This piece is part of a connected trio on hope, presence, and quiet resistance. You can read the full arc here:

This Is What Hope Looks Like / Not in Rage, But in Resonance / Before the Roar