on living
“To live like I’m kissing the universe on her temple.”
Idea
Kate Baer
I will enjoy this life. I will open it
like a peach in season, suck the juice
from every finger, run my tongue over
my chin. I will not worry about clichés
or uninvited guests peering in my windows.
I will love and be loved. Save and be saved
a thousand times. I will let the want into
my body, bless the heat under my skin.
My life, I
“Remember this the next time you fall asleep to a TikTok playing on an endless loop: one day your heart will stop beating. The only thing that’s eternal is love.”
Royal Heart
You will never be let down by anyone
more than you will be let down
by the one you love most in the world
it’s how gravity works
it’s why they call it “falling”
it’s why the truth is harder to tell
every year
you have more to lose
but you can choose to bury your past
in the garden
beside the tulips
water it
until it’s so alive
it lets go
“Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”
-Mary Oliver, Franz Marc’s Blue Horses
The Whole of It
If you step back, you can see it all
on the horizon: your mother’s death, the children
grown, their smooth eyelids crossed with veins
like saffron filaments. Further still, and see
your smiling grandmother treading the cold ocean,
tiny lakes in her collarbones, your great-
great grandchildren drawing their names
in the sand with
“And it’s not just the warnings of the dead you should heed; it’s also the warnings of the unborn. Genetically, there are far more people that could’ve been born instead of you than there are atoms in the universe. And yet, you are one of the mere 8 billion of us that are here now. To be alive is to possess an unfathomably rare gift; treat your
... See moreTincture
1975 –2025
Imagine, when a human dies,
the soul misses the body, actually grieves
the loss of its hands and all
they could hold. Misses the throat closing shy
reading out loud on the first day of school.
Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe,
the loose tooth, the funny bone. The soul still asks, Why
does the funny bone do that? It’s