Category Archives: The Next Chapter

When you lose someone you love, Your life becomes strange, The ground beneath you becomes fragile, Your thoughts make your eyes unsure; And some dead echo drags your voice down Where words have no confidence Your heart has grown heavy … Continue reading →

When my father remembers my mother has died, when he realizes he had forgotten, and he cries — if that’s the word for those great, wracking peals of thunder I feel against me, holding the hollow tree he has become … Continue reading →

It was the week of asking. Asking to watch her eat. Asking if she understood the doctors’ questions. Asking her to explain the difference between wanting to die right now, and dying later. The tumor making certain answers unquestionable. I … Continue reading →

The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don’t mind happiness not always being so very much fun if you don’t mind a touch of hell now and then just when everything is fine because even … Continue reading →

Empty-handed I entered the world Barefoot I leave it. My coming, my going — Two simple happenings That got entangled. This untitled poem by Kozan Ichikyo, written in 1360, represents a genre known as “jisei” or Japanese death poems, once … Continue reading →

My wild grief didn’t know where to end. Everywhere I looked: a field alive and unburied. Whole swaths of green swallowed the light. All around me, the field was growing. I grew out My hair in every direction. Let the … Continue reading →