Ten Self-Care Tips It was cold and dark when I left, but I had no choice. If I was going to hear even a whisper of my own thoughts, let solitude massage my attitude, and feel my shoulders release while…
Brainwalk by May Joseph On October 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy enveloped downtown Manhattan in a total blackout. The terrifying reality of living on the top floor of a tall skyscraper without electricity, a generator or emergency lights hit home. My…
May Joseph Cricket Sounding Darkness March 5, 2016 An abandoned house with red tiled roof in decay rises across the small hill. It appears so much smaller, innocuous, from how I remember it. It is my mother’s childhood…
Mrs. Yip the funeral director called. “Your father must have loved you children so much, because when I touched his body the skin disintegrated in my hands.” My father’s will to live through his two years of terminal colon cancer…
By now, it’s a familiar lament. Usually it hits mid-semester, when the honeymoon period is over and the work has really piled up. I ask them how they’re doing, and in response they cover their faces with their hands and…
When I finally sit down to write poetry at 9 p.m. in my “office” – which is my laptop sitting on my long wooden dining room table – I usually hear a drama-filled voice start calling, “Mama, mama, come quick!…
Dear Kindergarten Teacher, I am going out of town this week. My husband and Henry are coming with me because Henry is still nursing and can’t be away from me for more than twelve hours or else my milk will…
I am a maker. Thoughts are words, words are the building materials. I hesitate to say bricks as they, the words, I mean, are as malleable as play-do, as changeable as water. I am, though, inert. My being is set,…
Seven years ago, we left our Upper West Side co-op for many reasons. My husband needed a driveway. My toddler deserved a bedroom with windows. I had to get out of the kitchen — that narrow room, where, cramped in…
A pen in hand works like bloodletting. Something in the gut. It’s the Voice of all voices asking to reign and leave my body behind, but I need more time. I trust other people when I want to believe they’re…
I brought our daughter with us to the last nursing home. Both her grandmothers were there to help me figure out the next step on our path. She was only five and we’ve been in these type of situations since…
I have lost twenty-four pounds. Most of it seemingly from my breasts. “They are like teenage breasts,” my husband says. He quickly adds, “That’s a compliment.” I have my doubts. Why do the breasts go before the potbelly? Yet that,…