My son is afraid I’m going to die. This fear leaks out right about the time he shuts his eyes at night. He’s worried because anything can happen. Tonight’s specific “anything” is accompanied by fear of violence and death in general. He can hardly utter the words. It makes him gasp for breath, wide-eyed and choking atContinue reading “When Fear Paralyzes, Love’s Got Legs”
Category Archives: death
The Stillness
Tonight I sat on my husband’s grandmother’s bench in our backyard with Izzy and waited. I waited for one of the boys to whine or run home from the next-door neighbor’s house, where I hoped they had gone after fussing over whether they had to eat all their dinner and then not eating all theirContinue reading “The Stillness”
The Middle Ground
My latest blog post for Off the Page on the roots of racism and what we ought to do about “The Others” was shared on Wednesday. It was difficult to write this article because the temptation for me and I suspect other Christian writers is to craft the I-was-lost-but-now-I’m-found message, I was bad but now I’mContinue reading “The Middle Ground”
Dying Mom Stories and New Year’s Resolutions
As a reader and editor for River Teeth, one of my major biases was dying mom stories. Writers think just because their loved one has died or might die or is dying, they ought to write about her. It’s sad. It’s hard. It’s life changing. So we write dying mom stories. The trouble with the vastContinue reading “Dying Mom Stories and New Year’s Resolutions”
Easter Saturdays
Easter Saturdays (tentative title because I stink at titles) Cars full of people split the swamp where my creek flows.They must not ponder, pause, stare at hollowed logs,branchless trunks and wonder about the end of winter,spring still a whisper in the trickle of cold water through the culvert. What does all this dying mean, thisContinue reading “Easter Saturdays”
Enough
EnoughI Chronicles 21:15 How many times have you said,Enough! Withdraw your hand –the vessel of your wrath subdued?What invokes this rage, earthquakes,hurricanes, bubonic plague, rampanttrauma sweeping across continents? Why spare any? Impossibleto find mercy in so many, to lookbeyond intractable justice and seelove hollow in bellies of famine-struck,flowing like stopped-up rivers, yearsof cloudless skies, millionsContinue reading “Enough”
Fruit
I almost didn’t write a poem tonight because, well, I’m lazy. And my body said no. But since my body didn’t have to do much to write and since I followed the lead of a friend to make the “Mosaic of Me” on Facebook (which should technically appear below), I decided there had to beContinue reading “Fruit”
Cascade Valley
Look, my daughter, the pine treedropped its seeds, and herea fragile sapling braves the forest floor.This used to be a birch treebut maybe lightning sliced it,wind heaved its heavy breath against itand now the trunk is rust.Sticks used to flirt, flaretheir skirts of springtime buds, but now we throw the broken limbsinto the rushing floodwatersContinue reading “Cascade Valley”
Defenseless
DefenselessPut on the full armor of God… You loosened your belt,let truth slide to the floor.You slipped off your sweater,threw it in the corner.Your feet were bare and prone to slip,legs uneasy, head dizzy…What if you’d been wearing a helmet?What if you had had a swordto wave at that demon who luredyou toward the window,whoContinue reading “Defenseless”
Revision of Hoarding Any Memory
Hoarding Any Memory Come give me a smooch! – Richard Lingro, Sr. You appear in a family picnic clipfifty pounds heavier than I rememberand bearded. Come give me a smooch!that scruffy kiss and heavy hug. Lawn mower tractor pulls, greasy rags,and polka music play, profoundaround the fuzzy photos, figures distorted,shorter, thinner, younger years away, drivingContinue reading “Revision of Hoarding Any Memory”
Sarah Marie Wells 