How it began,
I still can’t say.
Just a quiet September morning,
light thinning early,
your laughter catching
like it had always known my name.

He is a quiet poet, she told me, and knows
how to dequill a porcupine without gloves.
His mother sent him to his uncle’s farm
every other week-end and for a month
each summer to learn how to make do
with little or no amenities of modern living,
like eye-patches and complete alphabets.

Last night, no searching, no symbols—
just her,
steady as breath,
warm as morning light before the world wakes.

Here, where the walls seem to breathe in quiet rhythm,
you did not simply find work.
You stepped into a living spirit,
a place that met you gently
and opened itself like a hand waiting to be held.

It was me, in my bikini,
And my glasses.
And the latter was failing its job.

The bus stop smells like rain and hot metal.
A flyer peels itself from the glass wall.
Someone’s coffee bleeds into the sidewalk,
dark spreading veins through cracked cement.
I count the coins warming in my palm,
their dull clink keeping time with traffic.

The other world is stone –
machinery ear plugs offices high up.
A lover burns herself.
A man counts his mistress in numbers.

Whenever I get migraines
I see geometric shapes,
same way all my hospital gowns
have triangles and squares.

2025 Solstice Poetry Award Winner

The night unravels, infinite and deep,

A hush of silence blanketing our sleep.

Stars whisper—distant, cold, and clear,

Each one a memory suspended in air.

Red carpet under the feet of the executioner
Red carpet
The same color as blood
Flowing, of the
Innocent children

A father, beloved, curled like a fawn
once a safe port in fitful storms of wrath
eyes of a cornflower nimbus sky
and a mind filled with battles long past
I saw his defeat, and now he is gone
lost to the bronze song of history

On this quiet morning,
before the ovens warm
and the world leans into its rituals,
I sit with a cup cooling in my hands
and think of you—
the ones who send us poems
in the late night hours,
the ones who read them
on lunch breaks, on train rides,
in the stillness before bed.

What little boy comes to stay
at his new foster home
with a boxful of trucks and toys,
and has absolutely no idea how to
imagine what they
might be doing?

Even the night comes to an end someday.
But what will be the price I pay?
When morning breaks across your skin,
will she still sleep where I should have been?

I wish I had known the version of my father
that others did:
Scooter Dude on the sidewalk,
pretending he was gonna run over
children’s feet,
them squealing with glee.

She couldn’t grasp onto her inner self.

She thought she had a hold on it,

but it slipped through her fingers—

like they had a mind of their own,

like they sabotaged her.

Wait!

Wait for me to catch up.

Can you slow down a bit?

You’re going too fast.