I START OUT plumpa pearthick skinned and hardly ripe but then with each hourthe skinis worn inand my love is worn down I rattle with bonesI open my mouthand it rings like an unkept bell First too softand thentoo loud SARAH currently lives and works in Edmonds, Washington. She would describe herself as painfully shy…
Do you remember how I’d walk near you on a Saturday morning? There was a grey drizzle and puddles growing all around, sometimes even a stream forming from the hillside and out the old black tube. I don’t remember rain jackets, but a grey sweatshirt that would slowly soak across the morning. I’d trace…
Rachel’s email about ending Kindred arrived four days into the new year. She described both the sadness of farewell and “yielding to a natural rhythm; this organic living thing is coming to the end of its life, and we will bear witness to its passing as we have borne witness to its years of flourishing.”…
[introducing the band Solorien] LYRICS (words from the traditional latin mass) – pacem relìnquo vobis pacem mean do vobis qui vivis et regnas in sàecula saeculòrum (I leave you peace, my peace I give you. Where you live for ever and ever) MUSIC Solorien PRODUCTION Tara Ward | vocals Matthew Chism | too many guitars…
We’ve recently moved to the desert, a rocky land punctuated by jumping cholla and pink skies with air dry enough to crack your lips and warm enough that even now in early March I rarely wear more than a thin sweater, and, then, only when it is early morning or after that bright sun has…
To the ghost of kindreds past, present, future: I salute your intrepid spirits navigating the seedy lots off Highway 99 and hurried pie buyers to inhabit a corner booth at Shari’s every Monday night for so many years. Those full diner mugs topped off, the waitress taps the carafe of tepid liquid and says…
I’m sitting on the porch of hundred-year-old officers’ quarters looking out over grass and trees and, in the distance, Crockett Lake and the salt water of Admiralty Bay. Two juvenile deer graze watchfully a few yards away, while red-breasted robins twitter in the cedars, and a couple of daffodils loll their yellow heads in the…
I am a hoarder of sentiment and nothing stirs that up and smacks you across the face quite like the act of packing for a move, or in this case, a renovation. I managed to purge a box of gift receipts from our wedding 13 years ago along with a stack of insurance packets given…
HE LAY ON my chest, his purrs reverberating through my body. I stroked his ginger striped fur, soft as his baby fluff had been. This little one who had joined our family fifteen years prior—before babies, in the era of walk-up apartments and cross-country moves, when it was just Matt and I and the kittens:…
the air is heavy like the breath you blew across my ear to tell me that moss grows on the stoplight where I walk in sneakers whose holes allow the water to seep in, past trees dripping with lichen the rainforest isn’t far from the valley between volcanoes, fertile that’s how you see me, I…
I didn’t have to put much effort into healing until my brother Derek died. There had been heartbreak in saying goodbye to my grandparents, my aunt and my uncle. Even after all of the miscarriages, I knew I would survive. I felt, and still feel deep pain from those losses, but until I lost my…
On March 3, 2019, we adopted our daughter, Evelyn. I imagined future conversations I would have with her about her changing body, and froze at the thought of trying to teach her about something my body had not done since I was 15-years-old. For ten years, I desired to heal – I just wanted my…
I cry at the drop of a hat. It’s true. Anyone who knows me can vouch for this. Puppies, families enjoying a sunny day at the park, a toddler’s first skinned knee, a failed fledgling on the sidewalk, impromptu acoustic jams, a tiny tomato trying desperately to reach its full potential under the gray northwest…
the first morning we ate crackers and canned peaches with protein powder as the sun rose past the scrub brush trees and the missile silo doors and I imagined the doors flung wide to spend a dozen Titan AE-1s at our foes, real and imagined, while the boys around me chattered like the apocalypse was…
Winters here aren’t marked by blankets of snow. The gardens never have to be put to bed, but are converted to take advantage of the cool rainy season that allows us to grow the leafy greens, broccoli, garlic, and carrots that tend to wither under our summer sun. Even so, I spend that season dreaming…
Kindred 