May & June : Polaroids
Two poems about love changing shape
If you’re new around here, these polaroids are a place where I journal through small windows. In this edition’s newsletter, the polaroids are poems. They’re more personal than my longer form essays and (usually) more regular. Out of all the places you could be, thanks for being right here.
THREE // Your First Solo Swimming Class
Was it only yesterday
your baby-sky-eyes watched wagtails
from the stroller
and today you run
to the car, goggles in hand,
chattering and chirping,
ready for your first solo swimming class.
SEE YOUR PRETTY? and
THERE’S YOUR BEAUTIFUL
you call at blooming bougainvillea
and flashes of purple phlox,
as if you think all this
beauty belongs to me.
At a red light, poems pool
in the corners of my eyes
and drip down my chin
and I cannot stop them.
I must learn to let you enter the water,
body from my body, skin
from my skin. You will learn
to breathe, exhaling bubbles
beneath the surface and
I must breathe
new lessons too.
You name the water fountains,
water mountains — as if water could hold
its own shape,
as if years could hold
their own shape,
as if you could hold
mountains between your fingers
and you still
believe you can.
You slide into the pool alone.
I drift,
lingering on the edge, my toes
immersed,
same ocean
no tide
just a moment
longer please
while the mountains glisten beside us.
When class has finished you climb,
drenched, out of infinity
and onto my lap
soaking my clothes,
clinging,
close,
still
and the instructor smiles
and says,
Now
is the moment
when love is simply
love.
ONE YEAR WITHOUT YOU // A Displaced Bouquet
Displaced beauty laid
with devotion—
severed.
Grief has bordered
me between
the shoreline
between solid
and liquid, land
and river, touch
and memory.
We are uprooted
between
soil and sea.
Can Eden grow
from saltwater?
Can love grow
from loss?
Can someone else’s
grief
become my own?
Is it possible we love you
more now
than we ever did?
As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave feedback, comments or reflections below. It’s been a slower season than normal for my writing as we’re expecting a baby in July. Please know I’m so grateful for every person who has subscribed recently. I look forward to bringing you more polaroids and essays soon.
A few things I’ve enjoyed listening to, reading or thinking about lately:
Writing as an Act of Love - The Writer’s Circle Podcast by
: An Interview with Andy Crouch
Andy Crouch helps writers reframe their work with one big reminder: your readers are image-bearers.For the Advice Cards at Baby Showers - A Poem by Kate Baer
This quote from :
"To write is to gather shimmering pictures, holding them up to the light as they ripple and glow, turning them over in your mind like shards of iridescent shell picked up on the beach and rolled between your fingers.”Re-Enchanting The Life We Have - Re-enchanting Podcast hosted by Belle Tindall and Justin Brierly : An Interview with about the burden of geographical and cultural disorientation, living with ADHD, the power of poetry and the transforming love of God.
Oh, and if you didn’t catch it…
Here’s an interview I did with the brilliant over at :
Thank you, Ella Grace, for these luminous poems.
Congratulations on the wee one you are expecting next month. May his or her arrival go as smoothly as possible. Be well.