Crab is such an ugly word---the hard k, its suddenness. I’m steeped in these small pools, or perched on the surrounding rocks and sand, one hole after the next, searching for shore crabs, carcinus maenas. I find their gray and tan bodies, slick with the tide,...

  I go out into the world, looking for strawberries like the ones from my mother’s garden. They were small and firm, sweet but bitter, dirt caught in the leaves and deeper pits. We plucked them fresh from their stems and ate them before cleaning them, the dirt...

  Yesterday, I spent the day sleeping away my life. It was peaceful, the blankets all clustered near the back porch door, and all the doors and windows on the first floor were left wide open. The sounds of wind and wind chimes, birds calling, the scent of trees,...

  I want to get back into drawing, the pencil in my hand, the thick charcoal under my nails. I keep collecting spare pieces of paper, of cardboard, in the hope that something might happen. A horse, gray and white shadows, it appears---the long mane draped over...

  You should know by now that we can’t go back. Not like this. Not back through the electric fence or past the sheep, dehydrated and teeming. Past the mailboxes and songs. Our bodies are like their bodies now, stormed over and pale with all this sunlight and...

  A promise of something small---and the skin warms.     August 13, 2014, MLT    

  There was no other way to tell you that life was harmful: threw the box into the river, filled with rocks, with you, with light. There is nothing left but stars.     August 12, 2014, MLT    

  Tears burn yellow, burn wide, in the sun. The small sunflower seeds left over along your collar and in your hair. They are senseless, aimless, unceasing. This is the definition of mourning. It is a marionette, a song, unweaving.     August 11, 2014,...