love – My Little Hawk

go get that tattoo.

I have a tattoo of a phone number for my grandparents’ house. That was the only number I would’ve picked up and answered growing up. I hated talking on the phone! The number is no longer in use.

between always and never: going back in time

Regrettably, I lived a life full of things I want to change. But it brought me here today. So I learned to let go. But most of all, I learned that nothing compares to grief.

Navigating Adulthood

All my childhood, with how I held myself, I always ran ahead of time. Then, at one moment, I stopped to catch my breath, and when I wanted to start again, life had already passed me by.

While I ate cake at a family gathering: Thoughts on family

I stood in the corner, a paper plate with a slice of cake in my lap. My eyes widened with confusion. Looking around me, I realized: I don’t know that many happy families.

Children’s Understanding of Grief

My godson caught me off guard with how he explained where his grandparents are. To him, it was just another version of the story. Maybe next time he’ll get with something else, until he’s old enough to understand. Children’s understanding of death and grief is the most heartbreaking oblivion there is.

Summer in Details: Fragments of Time

Sitting with the weight of a year passed, I bite into a peach, and as I trail the juice from my hand to my elbow, I try to ground myself. My hands are sticky, and I wipe them on my shirt, leaving a blotchy stain on my ribs.

“You can’t have a village without being a villager.”

Protecting our peace, while important, is not something people understand its nature and purpose to be. We use it when we can’t be bothered to do anything, really. This lack of community is part of a much larger issue, but the point still stands: we forgot how to be friends.

Summer in Waiting Rooms: Figuring Your Life Out in Your Twenties

I’ve been ready to move all my life. I’ve been waiting forever in my room that isn’t my room because I have somewhere else to be. A home.

Lamentations of your unemployed friend in their twenties (excerpt from my diary)

My phone storage is full. I need to get my life together. I don’t have the leverage of being a student with at least some time still to go before I graduate to decide what’s next. There is no safety in a structure or a schedule that university life would set for me, where IContinueContinue reading “Lamentations of your unemployed friend in their twenties (excerpt from my diary)”

ROMANTICIZING SUMMER 2025: When Life Gives You Tangerines

I’m standing over the sink, washing the glasses, and smiling to myself over the familiarity of the routine summer always sets up for me. The shouting of the orders over the counter, oil sizzling in the kitchen, clicking of the glasses on the bar trays as they are carried through the restaurant, Aneta’s laughter fromContinueContinue reading “ROMANTICIZING SUMMER 2025: When Life Gives You Tangerines”