Full to spilling, we sit with our wonder:
How we’re becoming and what we’ve become,
How we’ve been shattered and how we’re still whole,
How in the water we’re lost and we’re found.

Glass on the bureau and sand on the beach
Clatters and tumbles like castles, like tears,
Like children down hills, like ice in a glass,
Like visions of who we thought we could be. 

Ache not for wishes that wash up on shores
Like driftwood or plastic or empty cans.
The pieces that leave us reveal us healed:
Freed of our yearning, we scar and we grow.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

waking, wondering
how pools took flight,
how fools pick fights
with dreams, how pages
cup could be’s and
cut seems and seams,
turn won’t go's green,
how youth knows what
justices miss: freedom
can only be taken
and we all suffer
the despair of thieves

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Clouds like krausen bubble
above us, pushed up and
over, spilling dead cells
and protein, plant matter
spent and stripped by hungry
little bodies that give 
themselves for themselves, we
yeasty beasties crowding
over each other to
hustle and make, farmer
and crop, below, focused
for generations, on
and only, to foment
society itself.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

left left
forgotten side
feeling weaker
needing work
balance owed
get even
take space
walk walk
step pivot
own own
crowned gowns
ate nines
tens flowers
gworl gawd
finding strength
fixing power
favored wing
right right

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Open your light and glow
The world is your dance floor

Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Curl and twirl, unfurl
The change is inside you

Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Bud out and lose control
Your now is your always

Bloom, baby, bloom
That’s all and that’s only
Rise up and be seen
We need all your colors

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Palms, like poems,
can open like petals,
offering us moments
to take in and touch,
sharing, making theirs
ours.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Poesy pauses on pursed lips,
poised to open its pink bits 
with one final silent push,
all breath and soft petals,
its pronouncement more word-bloom 
unfolding its empathy
than some predatory pounce 
by the hungry young puss-puss 
currently crouched and peering 
up at the perched birds who peck
at seed piles, small plant-pouches
waiting for their beginnings.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Now. 

Here. 

This. 

What else
can be
as deserving of honor,
as worthy of worship,
as in need of reverence
as these fleeting wonders?

Hold them gently, friends, 
and let them go.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Readying for a new day, week, month
like a crumpled sheet of paper,
seemingly spent, tossed aside,
just in need of a little smoothing
under careful hands. The soothing
tug from a finger and a thumb
easily opens and unfolds, but
even encyclopedic heft can’t
erase the memory of these creases.
No matter — fresh ink can find
new use for old contours and
even scratched out lines,
in morning’s warmth, can
pipe up and sing new truths.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Seated and strapped in, we have no
choice but to ride the ride. How can
we stand up to two-thousand tons
of fear-fueling steel? All gasp and
momentum, designed for shock, sheer
stomach-drop and awful thrill-feasts—
gobbling up our screams for its next
marketing scheme. Eaten, we heave
unheard across their screens, bulging
eyes seen, but not our sight, just fright:
delicacy served piping hot,
meat pie following a fresh shave.
I don’t think we can handle this,
we whisper, as our falling fate
clicks closer, unavoidable.
And once it comes and takes and hurts
and then fades, why do we pay it
to take us for a ride again?

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Brake lights backed up through 
a four-way standstill signal 
a nearby new beginning: 
months of discomfort, 
delays and detours as years of 
quick-fix concrete and steel patches 
are remade more enduring.
The Right Way hurts, you see: 
smarts and throbs and stays sore
for far longer than we’d like. 
Inconvenient and infeasible — 
an unreasonable expenditure; 
a clear and present assault on 
a normalcy with invisible risks 
and unseen harms — it asks patience 
from a short-fused powder keg. 
But for healing to be ours, 
so too must be pain.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week