Inspired by CARACOL by Rubén Darío En el campo he encontrado una gloria de la mañana tan brillante e implacable en la tierra como lo es a la orilla de la carretera; Sorprendente como las semillas en el corazón de una manzana. He llevado a mi nariz su fragancia espero nunca esté lejana. Dulce e…

I stared at the flames in the fire pit, feeling as it grew inside me, this realization that I would spend  maybe my whole life trying to emulate a man I  never really met. I sat sandwiched between his daughters, listening to the pride in their voice as they spoke about this stranger, this man…

I love you’s sit on the tip of my tongue like boiling water ready to spill over, like barely contained preschoolers waiting for recess, like balloons big enough to burst. I want to say it to the man at the gas station restroom line that lets me cut in front of him when it’s clear…

Before I learned to read, I learned not to wait up for my dad to get home from work. I grew up seeing the calluses on his hands and the paint marks forever splattered in his jeans, hearing horror stories about his clients in that half-angry, half-joking way he’d mastered over the years. Before I…