The alarm never went off. Or maybe she simply didn’t hear it. Not at all.

Scalloped images in monotones Sunk to the bottom of thread boxes

In the Cenozoic era, when stars still whispered to one another across the Big Black, there lived a gentle, quiet star named Thuban.

Do you know the fabric that they use on building sites?

Though I am always greeted like an old friend, the relationship with my nail technician is professional and transactional.

Mid‑breath. Mid-quake. Tears rise unbidden, defiant. The body unravels by its own decree.

Slack bodied, we saunter doughy streets prop us up hungover guiris summer is the air: thick like slicing through tortilla.

If family is chosen I know you won’t choose me.

Under curated light, each piece aligned, each flaw made right.

Vedha’s dad checked the cuffs of his light blue, pure polyester shirt and, satisfied, was ready to tear himself from the mirror and go to work.

Ben is a lanky, tow-headed lad whose family arrived in this small Pacific Northwest town in the fall of 1941 as an infant, with his seven older siblings standing on the running boards, clinging to the sides of the rickety Model A pick up their parents had bartered for by picking peaches and apples the previous summer in Eastern Washington.

Girl with a void Nothing to gain, all to lose

I seek silence, the stillness of water, objects in rows and the day I’m caught up.

My heart is dwelling between the fullness of my hips.

Pain arrived, urgent, deep in bone.

Strident is my soul Siamese twin of tamed curls

It all begins with the light falling on the wood.

The hardest thing I’ve had to do is consider abandoning you.