I watched as he moved from the witness stand, his hand gripping his cane, his head hung like a guilty man. It was the defining moment of the trial for me; a father unable to protect his own daughter from the evil that sat right in front of him

I listen from the kitchen. I am not leaning in hard to hear, rather, I am listening as one would to the rumble of a train approaching from a great distance, or the hum of freeway traffic beyond my suburban neighborhood’s boundaries.

The first morning of jury duty we arrived at 7:15am. There was a line from the diminutive wooden doors centered at the top of the steps of the four-story stone courthouse. It went straight down the walkway, like vertebrae, punctuated here and there by a person wandering off-center as they gazed at their phone, fingertips tapping and sliding.

The coastal town of Manzanita retracts during the winter. After the dark rains of January, February blossoms like a sunny daffodil poking its head from the hard dirt. We are also freshly awake, as we walk the same route down to the surf, a new spring in our steps.

Death is one of the triggers for change. It is the opposite of stagnation, of lying still and waiting for an attack, instead of surging forward, opening doors, anticipating that silent, sullen moment after a storm has passed through.

Some years, you feel the impact of living more viscerally, like recovering from a car crash, a protracted illness, or the loss of someone whose body you will never forget. This has been one of those years, and it has aged me.

The alarm goes off and I am already awake. I wash my face and look at myself and the day feels three hours in – I am light as a bird, eating seeds left on a windowsill.

Giving birth would have been preferable to the problem with my knee.

Feminism started as a pure fight. Our grandmothers knew the truth and decided to bring it up from where it lay, twisting and turning like a fearsome animal caught in a net.

On this September 11th, we drove to Carson Hot Springs, in Washington on the Wind River. It is a 75-degree day, and there is only the cut of blue sky, pine trees leaning, and the curve of the road as we drive along interstate 84.

What is the worst thing that would happen if they knew exactly who you are? - Judy Brown

For others to know you, you must first know yourself.

When I think of my father I always think of his beard. Or the absence of his beard, since I was in high school. The day he shaved his beard was the end of my childhood.

It has been almost exactly one year since the former CEO of my place of work advised that we would be “trialing” a work-at-home model due to the rapidly increasing spread of the pandemic. I was secretly delighted.

I have been thinking about stasis. There are several definitions for the word stasis. This one is from the online etymology dictionary: stasis (n.)

It is two days after Christmas and our dog Teeka died on December 22nd. This is the second loss I have had in 2020, the first being a dear friend, over the summer.