CHICAGO, IL -

I don’t remember the first house I grew up in, though I have mental pictures of it from stories my parents tell. I know that it had a skylight. A school maintenance man climbed through it one chill New England day to rescue my locked-out family. New Hampshire houses weren’t locked in those days, so no one carried latch keys—inconvenient given that my toddler fingers were testing their new-found dexterity on deadbolts. Having denied my family entry, I sat in the kitchen, crying over the burned dinner and all the other heated activity I had set in motion.

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SARANAC LAKE, NY-

It might be because this is my last summer in these mountains, for a while at least.

Or because my friend Amy is obsessed with the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico and their barefoot running.

Or because I just quit my job of nearly 10 years.

In any case, I’m conducting another experiment, exposing tender skin to the jagged edges of my world.

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PHILADELPHIA, PA

As we enter the teeth of winter here on the East Coast, things can get a little bleak. Gray skies. Frozen ground. In the hopes of melting a little ice, I’ll post some haiku poems that I wrote last spring and summer. Enjoy.

after a long winter-

the grill ignites

on the first try

my daughter’s two favorite M&M colors

are yellow and brown-

and green (more…)