death
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a letter to the dead… Hey Dad, it’s Monday again.I’m writing from where the cold snap brokeat 39 degrees, the mountains holding their breathlike a man waiting for test results.I wonder what sky you’re under now,if heaven is a temperature,a feeling of warmth after a long chill. Mom is okay. She still watches the news,gets
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Hey Dad!Her tiny voice—a small, blue birdat the nest’s edge.She’d remembered her way home,but her mom wasn’t there,and I hadn’t set footthere in years. Hey sweet pea, great to hear your voice.How’s work, your new place, your husband?It sounded strange—my own words,a slow fall from grace. Chirp, chirp, she went on,a new song I’d never
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I had given myself a week to understand dying this time around. The news arrived with a percentage—fifty-fifty—which meant either everything or nothing, depending on how I chose to look at things as they stood. There would be no worrying about having saved enough, no being a burden to my children and what remained of
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I feel the air against my face,tugging the hair from my eyes.The sun sings its same old refrain,assuring me the day has no end,and this kingdom of dirt and lightis mine to rule. Come here, friend, I tell a ladybug,and study her through the glass,a tiny iced donut from Winchell’s shop.When I stare too long,wings
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Romulus—the dog that smelled of sun-baked fur and dirt,ten years pressed into the seams of his chest. He carried him through the glass doors,yelling something half-formed to the receptionist,“he’s in pain—just…”and the words dissolved into the silence of strangerswho already knew. Romulus on the cold stainless table,eyes too wide, whites swallowing the brown,staring at him
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Prompt of the Day: What’s the Legacy You Want to Leave Behind? Legacy? Sounds like something for kings, tech moguls, or that rich uncle who left you his vintage comic collection in his will. Merriam-Webster’s first definition agrees: legacy’s just cash or stuff you pass down. Snooze. But the second definition? That’s the juice—a lasting
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Hey Dad, How’s the view from where you are? Is Jesus keeping you company, sharing stories over some cosmic equivalent of coffee? Yesterday was your birthday—eighty-one, if time even bothers to count where you are. Do you celebrate, or is that date just a faint echo of a life left behind? I wonder, sometimes, if
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I smoked my first Parliament cigarette today. I’m not a smoker, but I’ve had maybe 40 cigarettes in my life. Second-hand smoke? I lived with a father who smoked two packs a day until I left for college. Google tells me I’ve smoked ‘20 pack-years’(a back year being 20 cigarettes) indirectly. Add my own, and
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“With every breath, with every silent prayer, I embrace this fall, this existential dare.” In the depths of a void, where shadows stretch long, I speak to you, God, with a heart heavy with song. An emptiness vast, where no light dares to gleam, A place I’ve known before, a recurring dream. Rock bottom, they
BB Grey--musings 