A short letter to every relationship, romantic or otherwise, that ended as I was trying to forgive myself. To you: This house we built with all of its gardens and cobwebs we no longer knew how to tend to is haunted. The shutters we painted are dry and cracking under the incessant sun. The flowersContinue reading “Love, Robbie”
Category Archives: The Human Experience
Four years later
To Yia Yia, I keep a small jar, once strawberry preserves and now keepsake container full of lost buttons, on my desk that sat in your sewing machine drawer for years. If you were still around, I’m sure you wouldn’t even have noticed that they were gone. You’d find them one day amidst my messContinue reading “Four years later”
Thirty.
I’ve been thinking about the last decade of my life. On the verge of thirty and I don’t fully know who I am or where I’m supposed to be going or what I’m supposed to be doing. When I was on the verge of my twenties, I was filled to the brim with ideas ofContinue reading “Thirty.”
Show up
“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.” -Azar Nafisi, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” Today feels like hot coffee andContinue reading “Show up”
In other words
It’s been almost a year, and I have not been myself since. The things I didn’t say to him. The things I’ll never get to say to him. Things I’ll never get to do with him, like spend a meal across from each other, somewhere in between where our lives are, sharing stories and photographsContinue reading “In other words”
In review
“I’ll tell you this and I haven’t told many people,” I said to a good friend hours before the close of 2018. “I don’t know if I have any resolutions, but my word to live by for 2019 is bloom.” “That’s beautiful,” they said. Then silence. What followed was a beautiful space to live deeplyContinue reading “In review”
Coffee black
I didn’t start drinking my coffee black until after my father died. Turns out that’s the way he liked his coffee each morning, rain or shine, to start his day. It happened almost unconsciously. I gathered the materials to grind my own beans, pouring them into the hopper of my manual grinder, turning the metalContinue reading “Coffee black”
On grief and blooming
I. I’ve spent so many years of my life wishing things were different: where I’m from, my body, being so damn shy, exploring my emotions as a man, and wishing I was a better brother/uncle/son. Much of that time trying to change to fit into other people’s vision for who I am meant I wasn’tContinue reading “On grief and blooming”
Holdfast
“We should hold each other more while we are still alive, even if it hurts. People really die of loneliness, skin hunger the doctors call it. In a study on love, baby monkeys were given a choice between a wire mother with milk & a wool mother with none. Like them, I would choose toContinue reading “Holdfast”
The order of things
On a cold Saturday in late March, I wake with words sprawling, tottering themselves into a poem off of my lips. I move quickly to write it all down. Hours later, I’ve scribbled on the backs of several old papers: a restaurant napkin, a movie pass, the comic section of the local newspaper, a notebookContinue reading “The order of things”
R. Francis Williford 