The Tenants

What moved into my wounded heart.

Some poems you finish and move on from. This one keeps coming back to me ~ usually late, usually on the nights when I’m tallying up everything I’ve gotten wrong.

I have (have have have to!) to think I needed to believe that the broken places in us don’t just sit there empty. That something can move in. That the holes are where the light gets to set up its hammocks. This kind of self-invented theology has saved my sanity a hundred-thousand times.

I’m still slowly learning the lesson it’s trying to teach me. Maybe that’s why it gets to live on my own street now. Maybe someday I will actually be at home inside of me.

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Come write your messy human heart out with me.

Very Human Writing

Pacific Grove, California · October 19–23.

The machines can mimic grief and love now. They’ve just never felt it. Five days on the California coast, no performance, no polishing. Just the part of you that writes to stay alive. You don’t have to be a writer. You only have to be willing to pay attention to your own life.

A notebook full of honest surprises. The voice underneath all the noise.