Author Archives: annhumphreys
Message from Kimowan
Fill yourself with the clear emptiness of Cold Lake. The negative space carved into the breast of earth, a place that can hold the impossibility of water. This is the place of one turtle’s death– his upended shell shaping a … Continue reading
Mushroom
Where the world’s light cannot be found, you grow. You thrive in the darkness, you have found a way. Intimate, secretive, with sudden loud colors and tiny puffs that become your children. It is a beautiful thing to come upon … Continue reading
Online Dating
“I see you” was the last thing you said before I had to look away, to try to open the door, awkwardly locked, so you must have reached around me with your big sweet arms and, one last time, encircled … Continue reading
A Lifetime of Gratitude: To Maya Angelou
The books just came into my life. I have no idea how any of them got there. But they were always there, my rows of books. I kept them on the lowest shelf (an unsolvable mystery) and it was there … Continue reading
Money, Loss, Death, Life
All my adult life, I’ve had money. The reason why is my father’s death. I was 19 when I inherited assets I had no interest in understanding. For ten years I ignored this money, unable to deal with the burning … Continue reading
Poem for Vincent
The one we lost never once spoke, yet his presence could not be mistaken for another. No shape will ever again be his. He marched through the world with a singularity of purpose unknown to the human form. Among us, … Continue reading
So, Is Hula-Hooping “Spiritual” or Something?
I would like very much to address this head-on, flinching at neither the inevitable smirkery and scorn of the far-too-well-educated left, nor the peculiarly personal-feeling outrage of the tyrannical right. I would like to wade directly, as it were, into … Continue reading
To Begin Is To Fail
The first time I felt the sickening haunt of failure, I was eleven years old. I was in math class. The teacher, Mrs. Burnett, was young and irritable. She sported a short pixie haircut (it was 1981) and two front … Continue reading
Digging Deep
After my father died, there was a year of pure incomprehension—a novocained horror that no word or thought possessed enough truth to penetrate. Through the spiraling cord of the dun-colored dorm room telephone I heard my mother say: He’s gone, … Continue reading
Mama Dora
Under the soft circle of light from her living room lamp Mama Dora would slowly scratch my scalp and back as I leaned against her knees, watching Hee Haw. The little dun ottoman held the center of the simple room, … Continue reading
Open Space 