I am grateful for the surgeons who aren’t assholes. I am grateful for Taxol and Carboplatin and painkillers and radiation and CA-125 markers and carrot juice. For clean windows and Tylenol and singing penguins. For poppies and Subway and walks around the neighborhood. For candles finally lit, for losing our expectations. For flat rate boxes and black licorice scotty dogs from Trader Joe’s. For the O-VAX and the Hamster Dance, peach salsa and Seinfeld. For long talks with grandmothers. And mothers. For the friends who ask “how’s your mom?” and for those who don’t, because it’s too much to explain again, anyway. For Skype and Sha Sha, and her friend Kathy, and that high school friend who takes her out to lunch sometimes. For picnic lunches, heirloom tomatoes and flax muffins. For hand sanitizer and urgent care and shopping at Costco in a surgical mask. For e-mails from survivors and free nights and weekends. And I’m grateful for “good” days; really grateful for those. I pray for more days of getting sandwiches and driving to the park and watching clouds fly and wondering if we should buy a kite? I pray for a trip to Cheyenne and for a rodeo somewhere so that she can see me dog a steer. I pray for time.
Protect her during this time of magical thinking.
I am grateful for butterflies.

I look into the window of my mind.
Reflections of the fears I know I’ve left behind.
I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending.
I am on my way…
Can’t stop me now.
And you can do the same.
What have you done today
to make you feel proud?
(It’s never too late to try).
You could be so many people
if you make that break for freedom.
What have you done today
to make you feel proud?
-Heather Small (more…)

Trees bending in wind,
effortlessly shifting form.
I am envious.

These are the days of the open hand.
They will not be the last.
Look around now.
These are the days of the beggars and the choosers.
This is the year of the hungry man whose place is in the past,
Hand in hand with ignorance and legitimate excuses.

The rich declare themselves poor.
And most of us are not sure if we have too much
but we’ll take our chances, because God stopped keeping score.
I guess somewhere along the way
he must have let us all out to play
Turned his back and all gods children
Crept out the back door. (more…)

That was the summer he rappelled
down mountains on rope
that from a distance looked thin
as the dragline of a spider,
barely visible, the tension
he descended
into the made-up
state of Pineland
with soldiers from his class.
They started with a rabbit,
and since my son was the only one
who’d never hunted,
he went first. He described it:
moonlight, the softness
of fur, another pulse
against his chest.
The trainer showed him
how to rock the rabbit
like a baby in his arms, faster and faster,
until every sinew surrendered
and he smashed its head into a tree.
They make a little squeaking sound,
he said. They cry.
He drove as he told me:
You said you wanted to know.
I didn’t ask how he felt.
Maybe I should have,
but I was biting
off the skin from my lips,
looking out
beyond the glittering line
of traffic flying
past us in the dark.

from Frances Richey’s THE WARRIOR: A Mother’s Story of a Son at War

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

from Dan Albergotti’s The Boatloads