A healthy salad balances on a bedroom tray table.

I curse at inanimate objects in my path.

I insult the crutches and the walker.

Are crutches not among

the most evil things ever invented?

There is no rage here,

just a sudden burst of laughter

at the sheer absurdity of it all.

Laughing at myself is the best kind of therapy.

It turns frustration into an unexpected smile.

My hair has decided to grow straight upward.

My toenails remain stubbornly unpainted,

unpink, unglossed.

On the comforter, a plush bunny rabbit sits

a grown woman’s roommate,

permanently “all ears,”

the most dutiful listener in the room.

I think a studio audience might be fun, or not.

Life, the inevitable,

even with the spills and loopy pills,

is a glorious one.

You turned my smile downward.

It was bright.

Hopeful.

I was your Starchaser, your

Esperanza.

Your unapologetic Sanguinista,

your Daydream-believer,

your Luminista,

painting the dark

forever La Vie en Rose-tinted.

I was your forever Glance-up Girl.

But the sky dropped.

Can we loop the clock?

Rewind the reel just once more,

start at the prologue,

and do absolutely everything

possibly impossible

to save you?

Love,

An Incurable Romantic.

They handed me a script written in statistics.

They called it destiny,

wrapped it in clinical words:

Metabolism. Cortisol. Family history. Age.

A quiet permission slip to fade.

But I was standing in the quiet of my heart,

counting the names of those gone too soon.

My beautiful absolutes, stopped mid-sentence.

They never got to see how glorious

the privilege of aging could be.

So I said: Hell, no.

It did not start with a leap.

It started with a single, scraping inch.

A choice so small it felt invisible.

Then another. Then a mile.

Until the momentum made me realize

there was no turning back.

Three weeks ago, the doctor listened to my heart.

“An athlete’s beat,” she smiled.

BMI halved.

Cholesterol rewritten.

A body rebuilt from the blueprint of grief.

It was not a victory lap.

No time to stop.

This was an eviction notice.

I have no more minutes for the reasons why not, energy-zappers,

the critics, the nastiness, the noise.

Why waste a single breath on those who waste our time?

Refocus the lens.

Give the light to those who earned it...

give it to yourself.

Aging takes a massive bite out of you.

It is terrifying.

But living well is the only way to tell their stories.

We are the storytellers now.

We are the doers.

It only takes one stone to start the landslide.

Be the one.

Was this a dream, or particles of life?

Perhaps it was the weight of a lifetime settling into the quiet hours of a July night, where the air sizzles with the heat of summers long past.

Maybe these are the stray, glowing remnants of love that soar across the dark, infinite stretches of the universe, refusing to burn out.

As a grown woman, I look back and wonder if memory is just a sparkle we conjure, or if love is something physical, a collection of stardust that travels through time, carrying the warmth of a hand I haven’t held in decades, just to find me again in the dark.

As I reflected on this July 4th, my heart and mind were flooded with snippets from my childhood. Those glorious, unhurried nights of fireworks, watching brilliant fountains of sulfurous light bleed sparkling colors into the thick summer sky. I can still feel the friction of the asphalt beneath my sandals and the absolute safety of my Pop-Pop holding my hand, his grip holding tight against the booming world.

As the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, a woman who understands the quiet cost of survival, I imagined meeting my grandfather again, not as the fragile, silver-haired patriarch I remembered at the end, but as he once was, youthful, determined.

Falling off to sleep on July 3rd with the bedroom window cracked open, the humid night air carried the sharp, early bang of cherry bombs already testing the sky. And sometime between midnight and the first light of this morning, the walls of my bedroom dissolved. I found myself sitting at a heavy, dark wooden table. The air was thick and intimate, smelling faintly of citrus from lemon oil polish and the sweet bite of pipe tobacco. It was my grandfather’s office table, but the grain of the wood looked smoother, less scarred.

He is younger here, his face unlined by the decades, just a few years older than me when I was seventeen, an age when I sat in my own bedroom watching with a mix of terror and awe as Vietnam, Civil Rights, and Women’s Rights tore the television screen apart.

Watching him intently from across the table, the sheer physical reality of him struck me. I remembered how my Pop-Pop always wore his cool Sinatra hat tipped back on his head, a defiant tilt that belonged to a man finding his place in a new world. You could see his thick, wavy hair peeking out from under the brim. His hair was mostly a deep, shiny espresso, but if you looked closely when he stepped into the bright morning sunshine, you’d see warm red streaks hidden right inside the dark waves, like rolling embers waiting to catch. The stubborn curls at his neck spilled over his collar in the back, looking a little untamed against the rigid precision of his starched, bright white shirt and perfectly knotted tie. He always smelled clean, a mixture of barbershop soap and pure determination. His dark eyes were bright with the kind of hope that comes only after hard, lean years and newly felt courage.

There I sat in the quiet, remembering every line of his face. He looked up from his papers, surprised but not startled, as if he had been expecting me.

“Ah,” he says, his voice low, “you came. Good. I’ve been waiting.”

Nodding, my words finding their place as I watched him, I finally spoke. “Nonno… the world feels heavier now. Messier. The noise is constant, and I don’t know how to trust the good moments anymore.”

He paused, the amber light catching the sharp angle of his jaw. He smiled gently, a slow, knowing expression, as if I was telling him a secret he had carried his whole life.

“You think the world was cleaner back then? No, ragazza mia.” He shook his head, the memory darkening his eyes. “When I came here, people didn’t want us. We worked until the skin on our hands split open. We lived through the Depression, through the hunger, through war, through years when Italians were watched, questioned by neighbors, treated like dangerous strangers in the very country we were breaking our backs to build a life in. It was loud. It was frightening. We went to bed every night not knowing how anything would turn out.”

“But you believed,” I say, leaning forward, desperate for his secret.

“No,” he corrected gently, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I practiced believing. There’s a difference.”

He leaned back in the creaking wooden chair, folding his thick, scarred hands over his chest.

“You know what it is to be the granddaughter of immigrants? It means you carry two entire countries inside you, the one we left behind, and the one we built with our hands right here. You are not weak. You are made of our courage. You are made of our gamble.”

I sighed, the heavy exhaustion that often comes with adulthood pressing down on my chest as I wondered aloud.

“Ah, but I feel like just one person, a tiny spec in a dark room, who can no longer ignite the passion, or push through the weight of it all like you did.”

He laughed softly, a warm sound that filled the corners of the office. “We were all just one person. One tiny spec, as you say. But tiny specs can become brilliant, blinding skies when they refuse to go dark.”

He gestured toward the window, where the first pale lilac of dawn was beginning to bloom against the night.

“You want to know how to trust the better moments? You make them. I know you still do, I watch you from where I am. You notice them when others walk past. You guard them like gold. You pass them forward to the next hand. You don’t wait for the country to be perfect, bella, it never was, even when we lied and pretended it was in the brochures. You choose to be one of the people who keeps the light on in the house.”

I look at him, this young, fierce version of my grandfather, resolved with his own future and utterly tender with mine.

“What of the divisiveness, Nonno? A palpable, choking fear that seems to be retracking our steps, pulling us backward. What if I’m afraid?”

“Then you’re alive,” he said, his voice ringing solid and true. “And you’re paying attention. But listen to me: hope is not naïve. Hope is stubborn. Hope is the immigrant’s inheritance, the only thing they can’t take away at the border. Hope is the July 4th that happens inside you, right here,” he said, his heavy thumb tapping firmly against his own chest, right over his heart, “not outside in the streets.”

My Pop-Pop reached across the smooth, lemon-scented expanse of the table, his large, warm hand covering mine, soothing me instantly.

“Promise me something.”

“What?” I whispered, my eyes tracing the edges of his white shirt.

“When the world feels too big, you remember your size. Small is not powerless. Small is precise. Small is how revolutions begin.”

I nod, a misty smile warming my eyes as the warmth of his hug sank into me.

“And promise me one more thing,” he added, “You celebrate tomorrow. Not because everything is right, but because you refuse to give up on making it better.”

The morning light was growing brighter, starting to dissolve the edges of his Sinatra hat.

“You sound like Pete, Nonno,” my voice caught in my throat, a bridge between my past and my present. “Have you met him yet?”

His eyes glisten, catching the new light, holding a secret he didn’t need to speak.

I wake up with the sudden, golden glow of real sunlight on my face. The bedroom window is still cracked, the morning air cool. But the echo of that voice I loved as a child is still vibrating deep inside my chest, a visceral, physical reminder that I am part of a long, stubborn, unbreakable lineage of people who believed in building something better, even when the world was loud, frightening, and beautifully unfinished.

Ti amo per sempre, America, incondizionatamente, attraverso il tuo dolore e il tuo trionfo.

Yesterday morning I was lying on my front lawn, face to the sky, trying to decide what kind of lawn mower I needed to buy. The hedge clippers beside me were my perfectly illogical stand-in for a mower.

The grass felt silky and the light was in between, not quite sunrise. After my husband died, I disappeared into myself. Grief can make you feel small without you noticing. But something shifted. Just like when I was in my teens, my latest decade is about self discovery and trying on new identities. My friend, Sheila, told me I would become many new versions of me. “Try them all on,” she said. And I have, reclaiming pieces of the girl I used to be, the one who tried things simply because she could.

“Have you lost your filter?” someone might ask.

No, I have not. I have simply moved past the territory of complying, fading away, bending to stereotypes, and into the frontier of being true-blue. It is an independence our grandmothers rarely had the social permission to claim.

So there I was, completely content on the grass, testing out a gymnast-level lying leg tuck. My doctor may call it a functional fitness test, but for me it is the ultimate age defier.

You begin the maneuver with the enthusiasm of a gymnast. One leg stays long, a steady anchor. The other begins its ambitious journey.

You hoist the active leg, guiding the thigh to drape over its partner, twisting the pelvis just so, until, with a final rotation, the sole of that foot meets the surface on the other side. Squarely. Flat. Unmistakable.

In that moment, I was not a widow with a lawn mower dilemna. I was the fourteen-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on my bed, folded into herself like origami. That girl is still present. I just needed to shake her awake.

It is a hilarious, private flex, a physical middle finger to the concept of time. As I admired the sky, twisted into a human knot, feeling a deep, satisfying flexibility, I heard a voice.

“Oh God, maybe I have lost it,” I said to myself.

I looked over and saw my beloved neighbor, her beautiful lab puppy, and what appeared to be two cups of coffee headed my way.

She was half whispering, half calling my name as she moved low to the ground, stealth like, as though entering a stakeout.

“Bren,” she said, “are you okay?”

For the first time, I realized how ridiculous I must look. I laughed out loud, my hand over my mouth because the sun was not quite up yet. It was trying too.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as I raised myself up and gratefully accepted the coffee she offered.

She looked at me, then at the hedge clippers, with a half smile and a half concerned glance. Laughing, I explained that I was planning to trim my lawn with hedge clippers while contemplating what kind of mower to buy. But in between, I could not help noticing the sky.

Coffee cups in hand, we both lay down on my front lawn, and taking a cue from us, her puppy did the same. We were silent for a moment, admiring the beautiful pink, crushed-rose hue that had appeared for the second day in a row.

Then she said,

“You should buy an electric mower. Make sure it is light so it does not catapult you across the lawn.”

I smiled to myself. I am pretty sure me winging wildly across my lawn with an electric mower would look normal compared to tucking myself into the blades of grass. Remembering my newly defiant, non-compliant emerging self, I said,

“Our neighbors will think we are nuts.”

She smiled and said, “Who cares, let them. And you are the nicest, most fun neighbor I have ever had. Please never move.”

Later that day, her son mowed my lawn and I ordered my mower. As the sun set, I felt an odd freedom I had not felt in a long time.

Turns out I am not finished with myself yet. Not even close.

She is a collector of words.

Holding each one in her palm

with the fragile care of a baby bird.

At night, she wraps them in satin,

sleeping softly beside their quiet breathing,

dreaming in spoken sounds,

verbal watercolors of deep affection

her heart knows to be true,

words she tends until once more they rise warm and real against her skin.

Morning arrives, and she uncovers them gently,

guiding them out to find their place

in a world where she remains,

forever,

an incurable romantic.

When she weeps, her tears do not break her;

they only wash her eyes clean,

so she can see how to believe in love again.

Your eyes are your doorway,

make them soft,

corners gathering, tiny creases,

the flush of your cheeks,

drinking in the light of another,

like night-blooming flowers,

widening, wondering,

silently confessing that what is being beheld

is vast, intoxicating, and worthy of space.

Let those tiny windows be the tenderness,

that unique,

unrepeatable essence,

the path to your heart,

of who you are.

Allow your flaws, your struggle,

and vulnerability,

the terrifying, beautiful space where we stop hiding

and finally let ourselves be truly loved.

We are not perfection,

but what we have always owned freely

and completely,

a gentle power

creating beautiful ripples,

profoundly, wordlessly,

transforming our gaze into love,

holding someone exactly as they are,

the most enchanting alchemy,

the moment where souls touch

without a single syllable spoken.

It’s funny how we are undone by the familiar,

as familiar as the grip of a steering wheel,

except it is all new to me again,

in a way I haven’t felt since I was sixteen,

sitting on the driver’s ed wall,

waiting for independence to begin.

I deposited my girl, my friend, my chosen family at the curb,

leaving her to the restless pulse of the terminal.

I watched the strangers: the early‑risers and the dreamers,

and wondered if I could spot the desperado,

Banderas would be the lead,

where do such random notions emerge?

Am I dreaming... imagining

something wild and cinematic

in a place that is aggressively mundane?

Who was chasing a tropical isle or homecoming.

I peered at them and wondered

who was flying toward a beginning,

and who was traveling toward a painful reckoning,

the finality of letting go.

We never know the hidden cargo of another heart

with just a glance.

Then I began the drive back.

The road was an empty ribbon,

like the sky had swept the horizon clean,

a brushstroke of crushed rose and amber.

A pink morning makes me feel as though anything is still possible.

Why do the most beautiful things have to be temporary?

Even with the spilled hope of a bright new day,

highways are lonelier when you’re the one behind the wheel.

The steadiness of the tires only reminds you

how bumpy the path has been.

I talked out loud to you today

wondering where you were.

Now, the front door key turns

into a strangely specific kind of stillness.

I am back in the quiet,

wishing the engine were still running

just to drown out the fact

that I cannot hear your voice.

The cards were stacked before the deal, a blueprint drawn in invisible ink.

No familiar eyes to trace, no mini me to find,

but life has a funny way of winking when you’re about to blink.

The doc’s news was sharp, the tears were real,

but he said, I’ve got you, Boo,

and signed the Mother’s Day cards from the puppies in a messy, paw printed hue.

(I laughed, because what else can a Pookie do?)

So here I am: the Ringleader, the rule bender,

the shhh don’t tell your mom secret tender.

While they do the heavy lifting, the veggies, and the chores,

I’m the one opening the magical, forbidden doors.

I’m the Aunt Bestie, the chocolate treehouse queen,

the purveyor of ice cream and extra time on the screen.

I powder the princesses, I hand out the capes,

I turn no into maybe in all of its shapes.

I didn’t get the branch, so I became the whole sky,

the irreverent sidekick, the twinkle in the eye.

No, I don’t see my soulmate’s chin or my own stubborn nose,

but I see the joy in the chaos that unconventional love sows.

So, to the women who held on when fate changed the plan,

who found a different magic with a redirected hand:

Despite what nature withheld, you found a strength and beauty in your own blooming,

the ultimate nurturer, without the rules, forever illuming,

lighting the hearts of others with a love that is fierce and wild.

You are the confidantes, the enablers, the grace,

the most inner child.

Happy Mother’s Day to you,

glowing in that rare, earned, beautiful space.

Photo: Before language, before theory, before hurt, we learn each other like this.

Need is the ground.

It’s the rhythm that keeps her steady, the truth she will not negotiate.

It’s what allows her to rest inside herself: safety, respect, equal standing.

Need is not weakness. It is the framework of her wholeness.

Want is the reach, the sky.

It’s the spark that makes her move, the color, the curiosity, the rising.

It’s the part of her that chooses, that creates, that insists on beauty even after survival.

Want is not indulgence. It is the expression of her self‑possession.

She lives in both.

Need roots her.

Want lifts her.

Together they form the way her mind works, the way she measures truth against desire.

Men often mistake this duality for contradiction.

They hear need as dependence and want as excess.

But for her, both are forms of honesty.

One says, I cannot thrive without this.

The other says, I am most alive with this.

It is non‑competitive.

It is a conversation between the ground and the sky.

Between what sustains and what ignites.

Between the woman who refuses to misplace herself and the one who dares to ask for more.

Author’s Note:

Inspired by a beloved friend who wondered out loud about the dynamic between need and want. This is my answer. A map, really, because there is nuance in all of us as we navigate emotional intelligence.

Caught the light on my cheek this morning,

like love that warms your face with its hand.

Pressing through the glass and leaning into that exact spot

where my coffee cup was perched.

It didn’t promise a miracle,

it just made a quiet case for the present,

tilting the room until the ordinary everyday looked like something worth keeping.

There is no hurry in the way it moves,

just a steady golden patience reminding you that you are here,

and for a moment, the world is easy to hold.

Once upon a time,

one of those new shoes you talked yourself into at full price

slipped off your foot at midnight

while you were on your cell with Sheila,

briefing her on the evening’s collection of you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up,

clicking to find your ride,

and down you went

like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality...

“Whoa, Nelly,” you exclaim,

because you know you have sparkle-cursed the F-word

more times than your mother would find reasonable.

You close your eyes, wondering if it’s a sign;

can your current kingdom

spin it into serendipity,

because we all love a good love story,

when really

you just had too much prosecco

and the night tilted a little.

There is no prince sprinting down marble stairs

with your size-eight dignity in his hands.

There is only you,

barefoot,

laughing too loudly,

trying to remember where you left your debit card

and why you ever thought magic had a curfew.

We are all hummingbirds in a heavy wind world,

vibrating at twelve hundred heartbeats of I want you here

and I want you gone.

We want to slap the revenant of what was,

to pout like a child in the ruin of a nest,

and then, with the same hands,

to mold the raw nerve back into a mud packed lip of longing,

to be vulnerable once more.

But sometimes the cold is too much, and the nectar runs dry,

and we must surrender to the torpor,

that quiet, glass cracked stillness where the heart crashes,

like a city of cells pullulating in despair,

sealed in glass,

a bell jar

lifting toward a sky that only mimics the light,

a cold, flat lie

with no passage to the other side.

Falling from the shimmer, we hang upside down, stiff and unresponsive,

a miracle of existential arrest masquerading as disappearance.

It is not a choice, but a compromise with the dark,

a brining of the spirit.

Preserved in the salt of saudade,

we wait for the wash of a sudden water.

And when no water rises,

we turn outward

toward the people who hurt us,

and see their wings moving at eighty beats a second

just to stay level, or see them hanging, frozen,

in that shivering wait for the sun to return.

They are not being cold.

They are simply siphoning the leftover heat of being alive.

It is a dignified silver grey peace we allow.

There is a loveliness in that decency,

the way we excavate the old self

just to find the singing, magical parts worth saving.

We hug the people we want to ignore.

We console the part of them currently in the deep sleep of survival.

It is a grace:

clumsy, unplanned, and profoundly honest.

Photo: Penn State, ML Haring

*****

Author’s Note

Sometimes in life we circle ourselves, balancing that place where love, gratitude, instinct, risk, reclamation, and ache all meet. I found myself there recently. A beautiful weekend, unseasonably warm. Friendship as gift. Nature doing what it does so spectacularly: a robin, a cardinal, the peony bush rising. Soon, my sweet little hummingbirds.

I leaned an elbow on the windowsill and rested my cheek in my hand, staying still for a long time. From that stillness, this piece emerged.

It’s Sunday, and it should be easy, right... right?

NO!

I’m a meme today,

NOT mean, meme...

Like that duck one,

If it looks like, talks like, no the other one.

I’m pretty sure my ducks are not all in a row:

One is staring at the fridge,

One is speed‑walking in circles for no reason,

And one is stuck behind the laundry basket,

And I am pretty sure one is a seagull,

Or is that a pigeon...

Oh, Shhhugar!

It’s an itty day with a big Shhh!

I know pigeons, people like pigeons,

The kind you wish you had, umm...

Screen‑shotted, deep‑fried, and vibrated right off of a cliff.

I am staring at the wall, cold coffee in my hand,

How did Kim Carnes show up in my YouTube rotation?

I am uneased, blurred,

Like the 4th video capture in a carousel reel...

The one everyone skips because it’s a blurry photo of a receipt or a crying cat.

Maybe I should stand in front of the oval mirror and try on my new shoes...

Are we random today?

It would appear so.

I should text Jane.

She may be talking to inanimate objects and I should join her.

So, we laugh, because we must.

Life is being ridiculous, absurd,

But that's okay,

Because despite the digital glitter, it's still possible to clean up, toast some bread, and

Smile

Big

Wide‑Eyed

Alive.

I saw a photo of a young couple on a moped

and I didn’t just smile, I wanted the keys.

I’m searching for the Italian ignition switch,

hidden somewhere in the bloom of my chest,

a second skin you graze with your fingertips,

catching your breath,

then go straight to Geronimo.

I want the vibration of a Vespa,

not the polite buzzing appliance version,

but that vintage 2‑stroke screaming through a Simonini pipe,

high‑pitched, raw, exhilarating.

I want a nape‑to‑hip sweep to tingle my spine,

to smell crushed rosemary and exhaust

drifting off sun‑baked stones.

My internal clock is ticking,

but it sounds more like a three‑minute egg‑timer,

and I want it to sound like Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia roar,

that feedback‑drenched, two‑stroke scream.

I’m told to “manage the decline,” to check the oil,

but I’m too busy waiting for the engine’s outward gasp,

the sound of throttle bodies swinging wide.

I’ll trade the wisdom of “knowing better”

for the quick, sharp break‑in of breath

that comes when you take the curve too fast.

Is the fountain of youth just a potent salad dressing?

I’m fueling on Sea Buckthorn oil like it’s moonshine,

the tart, orange sting of Omega‑7 hitting like nitrous on my tongue.

And those tomatoes… Ruggiero, “Red‑Gold,”

high‑octane pulp tasting of sun‑scorched earth and an all‑out ride.

And those gears are flooding with my DNA,

my mitochondria are bitch-slapping, raving,

kicking a backfire rhythm across the biological countdown,

strong, steady, and loud.

I don’t want to go back,

I want to carry every heartache and every lesson

like heavy leather luggage bolted down to the chrome.

I feel like the rookie of the year with more fuel than fear…

hunting down those beginner hours,

the sticky, sweet humidity of some new skill,

where absolutely nothing is a chore.

I’ve decided to age at the speed that suits me;

I am holding my own cells for good wine or a better face cream

and making them reconsider everything.

I’ll take the Dolce Vita sky‑melt glow,

the wild seaside salt air, and that reckless tilt,

pedaling toward that hill with the grip of a yeah, I know already pro,

and the absolute, beautiful ignorance of a beginner.

*****

Post‑Ignition

Someone told me that American widows are an interesting addition to the piazzas and porticos of small Italian villages. That was enough to get my attention. The fact that we’re mostly left alone, aside from a discreet protective eye, only sweetens the deal.

My friend Sheila sums it up better than anyone:

“We are like a wheel of artisanal cheese, revered, aged, and slightly nutty.”

Honestly, that works for me. A little defiance, a mid‑morning prosecco, and really good cheese feels like its own kind of freedom.

The tomb did not open to let Him out;

The stone was displaced by a Weight.

A sudden, imploding, chaotic shout,

That crushed the very concept of Fate.

He was not a shadow or shimmering glow,

But a Diamond, like lattice nitrogen crowded in stone,

A pressure coiled inward, waiting for the world to know

Of the brilliance that drove the dark out, voidites scattering as they go.

The silence of Sheol was finally betrayed.

This was no haunting, no vaporous drift,

As the gray of that stone-bound world at last began to fade,

It was the tectonic, biological shift

Of the Maker reclaiming the made.

Lewis once wrote that the grass of that Height

Would cut through a ghost like a blade;

For Heaven is heavy, a mountain of light,

Before it, all our summits surrender their might.

The “spirit” we dream of is hollow and thin,

But the Risen is solid and deep,

A Star that collapsed, but with Life, not with Sin,

Too wakeful for the oversoul to sleep.

The Ascension was not a float to the sky,

But a sinking through layers of “less,”

Until the true Hardness of Glory rose high

To drown every No into a Yes.

*****

Author’s Note

I have learned that profound loss and deep betrayal reshape the way a person understands glory, weight, and reclamation. They have not made me hardened so much as more alive, alive to what endures, alive to what is real, alive enough to never turn from light or hope again.

Resurrection outweighs ruin.

She looks to the sky, to the one she can see,

Her pink la lune, her secret, ma chérie,

The only one left, her mon ami.

She whispers her grief, her mélancolie,

To the glow of the night, so silent and free,

"Oh, bring back my love, ma rose, to me."

But the stars only stare from the dark, l’infini,

And she waits in the silver, her soul, ma vie,

Alone with the moon, her mon ami.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Pink Moon, rising in the east just after sunset on April 1, blooms in the sky for three luminous nights. Though her face is a brilliant silver, she is named for the creeping phlox, the “moss pink” waking at her feet to welcome the spring.

Dedicated with love to Angie, Lindsay, Julia, and Luke as you step into your beautiful new chapters. Shelby, sweetheart, yours is not far behind.

Let fighting never find a home in our time

(Che la contesa non trovi mai dimora nel nostro tempo),

nor upon our lips (labbra) 💋

Our love is too precious (il nostro amore è troppo grande),

for a single heartbeat to be in pieces (cuore a pezzi) 💗

I am sorry we argued today,

That we misunderstood (ci siamo fraintesi)

beneath the olive moon 🌙

You were my first love (il mio primo amore),

Tesoro mio, per sempre (my sweetheart, forever),

the one who kissed color into my black-and-white world,

Who made me believe il principe azzurro (Prince Charming) 👑

wasn’t just carved from fairy tales.

I should have bitten my tongue (avrei dovuto mordermi la lingua).

Don’t let our fire speak, (non far parlare il nostro fuoco) 🔥

la mia tempesta interiore (my inner storm),

Il mio slancio ardente (my burning impulse)

Rushed out like waves crashing against the Faraglioni 🌊

You deserve dolcezza (sweetness),

that miele (honey) le mie labbra (my lips) carry only for you 🍯

You deserve to be apprezzati (appreciated), ascoltati (heard),

and amati (loved) in the way the sea loves the shore.

Let our passion be like il merletto del mare (the lace of the sea),

white foam that turns the roughest wave into a gentle touch.

May we be as steady as the antico ulivo (ancient olive tree),

rooted deep even when the wind blows.

All the softness tucked beneath la mia forza (my strength),

All the passione (passion) stitched into breath (nel mio respiro) 🌬

All the perdono (forgiveness) learned through aching hours

It’s yours. Sempre. Always.

You’ve lived through too many affanni (heartaches).

And I refuse to be another storm you must weather.

Let me be la calma (the calm) that follows thunder,

Il sole (the sun) that warms your tired shoulders (le tue spalle stanche) ☀️

La voce (the voice) that murmurs

we won’t fight (non litigheremo) anymore

We are safe (siamo al sicuro)

Let us just love (amiamo)

and be loved (e lasciamoci amare) ❤️

I want to be mean today, to hurt back at the hurt,

To scan the genome sequence, the library’s entire length,

Dusting forty-six chromosomal volumes on the shelf.

Twenty-three thousand gene chapters,

yet not a single volunteer,

not a single line

on how to properly weaponize the defense I need to find.

I searched the lineal archive for the hands that talk in fire,

The hereditary temper, the electric angry wire.

But the biological instinct is a familiae spirit, a Bella ’Mbriana who cannot will not do what I require.

I’m looking to clone, me, be an eye-poker, a colder tone,

I’m all “Prego” and “Basta” oh hell no, that won’t work.

“Prego” has no place at an authentic Italian table,

Not when I want to throw the plate but find I’m barely able.

I can’t seem to write it into my own active code,

My blood won’t boil or break, it just simmers back to “Prego”

for my own kindness’ sake.

My search for a vendetta gene

turned out to just be a recipe for sauce.

Hunting for a weapon,

finding a woman drenched in loss,

a polite hostess instead.

I sighed, “Please pass the red,”

and slathered butter on my crusty Italian bread.

*****

Author’s Note

It was one of those days I wanted to summon a storm and found… hospitality. I wanted to be darker, colder, meaner. Except I can’t. Cruelty is a missing trait. Some days, everything around you begs for rage. But you aren’t built like that. That’s not flinching, it’s proof. Proof that your heart will always lead.

Be the music in your own life. Don’t let the world decrescendo you.

I try to listen to life

the way a musician leans into a melody,

a wrist shake shimmer,

the squeeze of a biting reed,

hunched over the bell for the sweet spot.

Waiting for the subtle shift,

harmony bubbling up,

a slow bloom,

like a French press, like soup,

the place where something delicious

begins to stir us.

Some days it is a brushed drum morning,

soft and steady,

the kind of rhythm that lets you walk yourself awake.

Other days it is a piano shimmer,

zzhhh liiiing...

a day that starts with a hum

and blooms at the top of the keyboard,

unexpected brightness

sliding across the spine of an ordinary hour.

And writing feels like that too.

Like playing a single clean note

and letting it ring long enough

to see what it wants to become.

We practice every day

not because we have to,

but because something in us

wants to hear what we sound like

when we finally get it right.

Even the sad notes matter,

the cello low ones,

the ones that sit heavy in our chest

like an inconvenient truth

waiting in the wing.

Just standing there, really,

until I finally looked its way.

They are part of the score.

They give the bright parts their lift.

Last night I watched Shrinking

and let the music slip in like a friend,

Harrison Ford grumbling low,

Jason Segel being the clumsy syncopation,

Jessica Williams floating in like a muse.

The art gallery scene its own hum,

owning the ex, a piano key thud.

I thought, yes.

This is how I want to move,

with conversations that feel like jazz,

no sheet music, just something shared.

I want to catch the notes

that would have slipped past me.

Tightening the strings

until they are almost at the breaking point,

the only place the note is silver.

Recognizing when I have gone flat,

having the courage to twist the peg

until I am sharp again.

It hurts a little to be that tense,

but I do not want a thud

where there should be a ring.

Maybe that is all I am really after,

to be the needle in the groove,

feeling every scratch, every pop,

every deep down bass line.

I am listening to be vivified,

refusing the decrescendo,

letting the world play through me

until I become

my own little snap of sound

Author's Note

When we speak of love and creating, whether it is writing, music, or art, we are divining in equal parts passion, crafted nuance, and surrender. Divining is not a mistake. It is the right word. Let us live, love, and create in musical notes. The high notes, the bass, and all the in between.