my mother’s on the phone with my brother who said he wrote me a letter but didn’t.

This is the place where

I understood magnolia trees
mirrored the beauty on my insides.
And taught me to relax into my roots.

Irish coffee at dinner.
The aroma of roasted beans
can’t mask

There’s talk, says Illinois 

There’s always talk, says Alaska 

We steal four filet mignons
for every workday of the week. Except

I put olives on my finger tips—and made grapes of brine.
I counted street lamps like beads of a rosary—on the cold walk home.

My first memory of London is rain—
from inside Heathrow

Metal clangs and shrieking reverberate
down the hallway before we’ve even hit 8am.
My students found a dainty line of ants
cascading down their lockers
is all

After Ms. Peters’ purple dresses sagged
on her frail frame, her cough interrupted each lilting phrase,
but she held her students rapt in folds of story,
enchanted them with wise trees and humble spiders.