Today I have returned to myself, the weight of your passing, a wound still healing.
30 days have passed. Today, 30 minutes I moved, releasing the tightened jaw I’ve become accustomed to.
Though my tightened heart still spills the memories and my tightened mind still spills unyielding questions that will forever go unanswered,
Today without you, and with you, I’ve returned as myself, the weight of your passing, a boulder I’m learning to carry,
A boulder that pushes me to get stronger.
Sonia Chintha is an Indian American writer who lives in the Washington DC area. She blogs, writes poetry, and fiction. She is also an English teacher who believes that our experiences teach us more than any test. She is the founder and co-editor of Good Little Girls.
by Parivash Goff Illustration by Tatyana Safronova Begin When the others gather to play tag and foursquare, to dress up dolls and masquerade as pirates,
Burning brightly through the window The sun’s ray cut into space Warming every inch Filling it to its brim Crackling kindly from below The fire
I.
Minutes
into that first class –
two and a half full
decades since she’s done
anything like this –
she has to admit
there is a kind of poetry:
the manipulation of numbers,
a focused search
for the pattern
that will represent it
all.
I walked the familiar route; the same one I’d taken a few days ago, shuffling through contractions. Now I was making the treksolo, my son