a bike, a friend, the beach — We ride our bikes ambitiously from our home leaving behind her shiny terrazzo floors, breezy kitchen lined with pink cabinets, sheer curtains billowing over the small table under a low window. We pedal furiously across busy streets lest our tires melt into the hot asphalt, the rising heat shimmering the landscape to a…

Finding humanity in unlikely places — All the lads know Jack or Jacques as he is known in Montana. He came into my life 11 years ago, as rescues usually do, when I needed him most. …

10 weeks, 50 lessons, we continue — We are but a few now. Seven regular classmates, women all, and a young boy and his mother. Others, men and women, appear in the darkness quietly joining, listening. Their silent participation grounds the group in solidarity, in a shared reality. …

the weight of death, not in vain — **Trigger Warning: references to children, violence, graphic, death** The day of the massacre. Witnessing firsthand the carnage ever haunted by memories. Children, bodies pulverized, decapitated, their identity clinging to them in blood-splattered cartoon character clothes Your identity clinging to you is a fetish for destroying paper targets the gloating summons of paper tigers edged…

the superpower of raising boys — I’m kinda great at raising boys. Boys to men. An affinity granted by my mysterious red-haired green-eyed ancestor warrior leading men across the rolling landscape of green grassed hills upon shale and sandstone cliffs to remove the oppressors, to freedom. To freedom. Guiding young men and my own sons, exploring leadership, expanding worldview, navigating…

with women who should rule the world — On this day, the coming together is gentler. Quietly we come to our table set in the stars to sit upon slivers of electric filaments. Our space is lit by the glow of faces in the darkness of silent curfew as candles that will not blow out. We sweep our…

searching for her lost love — Grief wanders searching for her lost love. Grief holds your hand and pulls you along until you see the messages she wants you to see. Here. Do you see it? A letter from another beloved lost you would have missed in your busy life filled with stuff and empty chores that wash over…

Learning together as light in darkness — I am, you are, He, she, or it is Now I’m not, you’re not, He, she or it isn’t… We settle into our moment in time, pearls strung together, winding from the US, Romania, the Netherlands, Germany, through Ukraine, meeting with enthusiasm and now familiar greetings, tentative still in English and Ukraine. A question asked…

you will go, yet memories remain — Will it be summer that I shall see you gone? Will we have one last chance to lie on a blanket warmed by the sun until late afternoon when we are covered in the shade of the olive tree, dappled light dancing on our still-warm bodies, until the cool damp hidden with the worms…