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Plants
Sunbeams
August 2023One imagines the birth of happiness to be accompanied by some great spectacular upheaval. One can imagine it flowering in the most luxurious setting. Yet happiness is born of a trifle, feeds on nothing.
No Small Wonder
Dacher Keltner On The Science Of Awe
Emotions aren’t discrete bubbles. They are blending into each other all the time. You might be feeling awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and also realizing that we all die, which perhaps moves you closer to terror. In our work we try to find what’s true in it all.
August 2023
Quiet, Please
Gordon Hempton On The Search For Silence In A Noisy World
We must recognize that we’ve largely lost quiet, even in our most pristine, natural places. But we can still choose to value quiet more as a culture.
July 2023
Curve-Billed Thrasher
The curve-billed thrasher digs the small purple potatoes / from the raised garden beds and ruins them. / He sets them back into the hollows in which they grew, / each speared neatly once through the heart.
May 2023At The Market
It’s Sunday at noon, and the open-air / vendors are planted in their usual spots — picklers / pressed against the outer edge while growers / forest the pathways with kale, collard greens, / and patches of lavender.
January 2023A Sandwich Is A Concept
Our biggest fear was dogs. Ronnie and I looked up dog facts like maniacs. Can dogs smell through plastic? Does the USPS use drug dogs? How do you trick drug dogs? How effective are drug dogs? Are drug dogs a scam that the government uses to justify illegal searches?
January 2023
Frights
Ellie was a bedroom ghost: a dream-visitant, a gentle levitator, a classic cold-sweat presence-in-the-corner, but she felt under-sung. It’s not like the old days, she told us. They attribute everything I do to Ambien—
December 2022
Fighting The Tree
There were too many trees out back, some so high they were dangerous. If one of those passing storms came, the kind that tore off roofs and stripped shingles, a sky-high pine could definitely rip out its roots and crash down on our home.
December 2022
Grief Almanac For An Apocalypse
To live long enough in this world means to learn to nestle the twins of grief and hope in your arms. I tuck the bottle of fertility medication next to the black dress I bought for my mother’s funeral. We plant a white pine in the yard, in view of the window of our empty nursery.
August 2022
Updated Portrait In A Grocery Store
Most days I stick to the periphery — / produce and eggs and chicken and cheese — / but tonight I am buying peanut butter, / which here is inexplicably placed / with the popcorn and chips.
July 2022
