Each pet I’ve had over the last seven or eight years has been a rescue animal. I hand picked almost all of them, and there was something beautiful, and sad, and stoic about them all. I know most of their stories. Some of them have been through hardship and strife, but all of them have one thing in common – they were unwanted, and tossed aside by their previous owners. When you take something that has been abandoned or cast off, and you feed it and give it shelter, the very basic requirements at best, it is as though they…

Last night I drifted to sleep imaging long, angular ivory limbs sprawled across my tiny double bed…Little bumps like gooseflesh rising along your back because it’s too early to turn on the heat and too late to sleep with a window open…The lovely luminescence of your white, white skin bathed by the orange glow of the streetlamp outside my window…The gentle ebb and flow of your dream-time breathing lulling me like the steady sighing of the ocean…And so I slept, so sweetly.

Malalai Kaker I am woven together with silvery fibres of infinite fragility, and deep within my core there is a well of sadness so deep that whenever we lower the bucket into the black abyss, we’re almost always certain that it will never return. My sadness spills over from lifetimes that I can not possibly recall, but it comes always from the same source. Our very nature is swathed in mystery. We have been stifled and silenced, and held down, and sliced open, over and over and over. I gave you my blood and my breath, and for that I…

Generally speaking I can cruise just high enough above my emotional well to not get seared by the intensity of the fire I’ve been stoking for thirty two years. Every once in a while though, I wake up like any other day, but suddenly feel as though my skin has been peeled back like a banana in the nimble hands of a monkey. Today is one of those days. I imagine it is easy to equate this description with feelings of depression, but I assure you this isn’t the case. It’s actually kind of lovely to be in this space,…

Perhaps I cracked a rib. Or bruised it. Or pulled a muscle. At any rate, my right side hurts. A lot. Maybe what happened is that I became so full of self-pity that I actually split. Down the side. Just a little. No. More. Sad. And like that it’s done. I know I’m blessed to be able to mostly shake it off so. I know many people who can stay in sad for a long, long while. This gal cannot. I think I’d get too comfortable and end up moving in. Sometimes it’s a really beautiful place. The trees always…