MEANINGMAKER

storytelling

  • a fire that doesn’t go out

    I’ve said before that there are days when I can barely handle the world. At least, not the whole thing all at once. Including the hateful parts, the misogyny, the brutal disregard by the powerful of the powerless. Sometimes, I… Continue reading

  • about mothers

    This is the thing about mothers…. Even as a small child some of us will understand that our mothers have secrets. Longings and hidden sadnesses. Silent sorrows and quiet pains. Some of those things will only ever be told to… Continue reading

  • a brilliant wreckage

    I left a brilliant wreckage. A white-hot, smoking tangle of family and love and hopes and forevers, the shatter of which was so great — at least in my mind — that after the words were out, there was no… Continue reading

  • the weight of the world is love

    It’s lunchtime and I closed my office door. I feel sad today. Nothing happened to me. I’m blessed in an embarrassment of ways. And yet, some days just seem to sit on top of me like a stone. The world… Continue reading

  • i’m still here

    She kneels down next to me and presses her palm to the side of my face.The softness of her.Her hands always so warm.She leans close.We stay that way for a minute or two.I’m still here, she says.All you have to… Continue reading

  • stars

    On a crisp January night, I look up through the scalloped treetops, at the twinkling mansion of the night sky. I don’t know much about the constellations or the heavens, or what’s beyond those things, but they make me wonder.… Continue reading

  • the blue house

    A poem I haven’t thought of in some time has been hanging around me the past few days. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s a message. It turned up for me again this week as I was doing some research.… Continue reading

  • lessons from a gravedigger

    I stood at the upstairs bedroom window for a few minutes this morning, watching as a man chipped away at the cold, hard ground, squaring up the sides of a new grave in the cemetery that butts up against our… Continue reading

  • house of cards

    It was a house of cards. Everyone was busy playing their hand. We took our own deck, a bottle of wine and a corner table. At the end of that night, the bottle was empty. Everyone was gone. And there… Continue reading

  • the telling

    For some reason — I don’t remember why — same-sex marriage had been in the news around June of 2012. That Sunday night, as I grappled with what my own coming out story would be, we talked about it at… Continue reading