Toddler's expressive eyes  gleam as they idle away the hours
Of fun with golden gift wrapped present from doting parents
Yes that shared joy endemic to that  cherished December day

1. Some days I feel like a superhero. Other days I feel like I’m barely holding it together with coffee and sheer willpower.

2. I thought I knew what exhaustion was, but then I met a toddler who thinks 5 AM is a perfectly acceptable time to start the day.

3. Watching them sleep is the only time I truly understand the phrase “they look like little angels” because when they’re awake, it’s pure chaos.

4. No one told me how much guilt comes with motherhood. Too much screen time, not enough vegetables, working too much, not working enough.

The following account predicated on partial fact and a healthy dose of prevarication with an attendant overactive imagination.

Trying to REM ember the waking stage of an emotionally tormenting dream

One week later
still dog-tired after jarring telephone ordeal
(seven days ago from April 30, 2025)
with fake government employees,
yours truly still emotionally haggard
trembling and wretched
closely following on the figurative heels
of FaceBook account of mine getting hacked,
whereat my psyche got hijacked to Cuba.

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all tied up
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Somewhere above a port town
stacked like a drunken Jenga game,
a cat crosses a corrugated roof
as if it owns the moment—
which it does.

Below, a man sobs into a cappuccino
because she left him (again),
and the housing market is fake,
and his therapist nodded too slowly.

Meanwhile, a crow shits on a streetlamp
in front of a view that would
break your Instagram.

Empathy killed my uncle.
This poem is not about that,
except it is,
because I used to think my pain
was weather—
external, forceful,
something you just dress for.

After a fruitful day,
I reflect and sigh ,
heartbeat ripples,
elation at a stroke,
due to stoke of say,
urban vim beguiling,
of mindfulness yet,
fruition bound now,
as I nod at a satin,
moon tint pillow,
restful night sleep,
pledge to oneself,
dream float segue,
city dawn waking,
pointer to ensuing,
glad morn ventures

The femur of an ant sustains a wound?
No fear! Her friends come round to amputate it.
The injured ant is brave. (They don’t sedate it.)
Her tight-knit colony is super-tuned

to spot all troubles, never apathetic
to nest-mates. Every helper is a hero.
Each one of them, despite receiving zero
training, is a natural-born medic.

They diagnose, see if the wound’s infected
or sterile, and then treat accordingly
(like surgeons you or I might go to see).
Damaged or not, no member is neglected.

They work for forty minutes on her leg

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Met you on Thursday,

‘Cause it was the heart day.

You don’t not like so —

Sushi — my type.

For every date, is there anything you’d bite?

Sushi body —
You must like it, right?

Night-long calls,

Somebody’s sleeping tight.

Stories flying high, I rambled on —

The sky my stage,

From page to page.

You must have listened,

Eyes that glow...

Turns out you dozed off long ago.

An EDM show,

A rap girl could try,

The boyfriend — surely I called you mine.

Sat on the shoulders, I do like —

Lovely and muscular!