My poem “How to Be Kind to the Heart” is in the beautiful online Fall 2026 issue of the journal Litmosphere. It was inspired by my wonderful Occupational Therapist Stacia who has been helping me with mobility problems related to my back. Besides practical solutions, she also uses guided meditation which I have always appreciated. You can read the whole amazing magazine by going to www.litmosphere.charlottelit.org. Below is the poem:
How to Be Kind to the Heart
for Stacia
You teach me to scan my body
to identify where pain has lodged
causing the physical self
to echo the emotional one,
trauma of twisted dreams.
We begin at the toes,
my feet malformed by years
of walking out hurt, scuffing
away unkindness, even my own.
My left leg burns, yet when
I touch it, the skin is cool, nerves
like frayed electrical wires traveling
from my backbone. My pelvis
mourns grown children. My
stomach recollects my father’s
cancer invisible until too late.
When we arrive at bones and cartilage
surrounding my lungs and heart
labeled “rib cage” you tell me
to re-name them “rib basket,”
cradling, not imprisoning, breath
and pulse, pulse and breath. I envision
a circle of women: my grandmothers,
mother, sister, all in spirit,
plaiting a container around my life
to keep me safe from the ghosts
of my own nightmares.
Each morning I pause, inhale,
exhale, deep, deeper, feeling
the flexible armor in my chest rise
and relax. My heartbeats play
their irregular tune, not disease
or defiance so much as a gentle
music, breeze through fieldgrass
weaving me safe and whole.