We follow one another’s lead, like Breadcrumbs through our lives.

I walked right up to the gate and inexplicably, I failed to board the plane. 

Perhaps there is no easy way with cancer. But I chose the one most misunderstood. That choice has cost me the respect of some.

There was a time it seemed important to train my Great Dane puppies how to eat without slobbering all over the walls.

Some were manicured. Some were bitten and worn from labor and stress.

This is the fun part. When seeds sewn blossom into something eccentric and untamed, like wildflowers in an open field.

Have we misunderstood that the knowledge we can offer the world is mastered in some online course or seated in a conference hall?

His arm and the colors of his tattooed sleeve. The hues of green, the colors of me.

It isn’t rare that I see the fleeting movement, like a soft brushstroke in the corner of my eye.

I didn’t plan this. It planned me. Piles and piles of things lovely and once-loved telling me to let them go…

My DNA is evident in the way my lips know how to round and pucker when I say Je t’aime…

Something I shared last week in this Journal made a friend of mine think that I am dying. I assure you; I am very much alive.

Two hundred and sixty-five. The number of once “must haves” now priced to become essential treasures in someone else’s life.

Can we admit that the thing that mesmerizes and haunts us is sometimes only really wanted in the chase?

I am sitting in a room absent of sawdust, devoid of paint cans and drywall, electrical wiring, and plumbing parts.

I arrive first and fold into the chair as if a bodyguard protecting me from something of which I’m not quite aware. Tentative at first, the whole of me sits in upright angles but soon I’m leaning all the way in, and warm conversation fills the air, like fresh grounds of the darkest blend, generous, luscious, permeating.

The flooding came on the heels of the cancer diagnosis, just as unwelcome and unexpected. And as a thousand strands of hair fell from my head, we began counting the losses adding floors and walls, framing and ceilings to the list.

I carry within me the stories. My people gave me brown eyes, long legs, and a prominent nose.

I believed until recently that absentmindedness was the reason I leave my keys on the checkout counter…

There were three of us—Artist. Professor. Chef. I proposed, “Of body, mind, or spirit, which drives the decisions of your days?”