My alma mater has a group of us who are banding together for April to achieve a writing goal during National Poetry Month, yay! I just read the first email complete with a poem and writing prompts.
As expected, a prompt led Word Raccoon WAY off topic, but the poems aren’t necessarily to be shared, anyway. At least not yet though it sounds like some virtual open mics might happen this month.
Anyway, I’m grateful for these lovely people. The program is so large now I don’t know everyone, but they are still my “writing family.”
This morning, after reading the featured poem and the writing prompts, I wrote a poem called “Residue.” I revised it, just once, but pretty extensively.
It’s not just a notebook poem or I’d share it here. This one wants to be something. It has a panther, a gun, moths, and dirty dishwater in it.
I know, I know.
I have the title for a second poem written down, too: “Self-Haunting Oven.”
Hey, you should never have tried to move me off the domestic dime, life. I’ve just doubled down on the importance of it, LOL. Half kidding. I think that will be a fun poem to write.
I ended up submitting to a total of 15 places yesterday. Am I tired?
Absolutely.
I didn’t expect to have poem-writing energy this morning, but I’m grateful as it helped me reshape some memories.
You know, you don’t have to be a part of a writing cohort to write something every day. Almost every day. Hell, try once a week. You just have to fire that G-D inner critic. Forgive me for interrupting the eating of your Wheaties, but when did Herbert ever do anything for you, anyway? He’s an asshat.
Word Raccoon is just here for the Coke Zero this morning. She’s yawning like she doesn’t have places to be today.
Word Raccoon keeps pouring Coke Zero and iced tea into me, begging me to submit to just a few more journals tonight.
“We have submitted to nine already. Hells bells, what else do you want from me??”
She’s determined as she perches on the after-storm porch at home.
Where are WR’s signature earrings in this image? Also, not a representation of me at all. But it’s a fun image, so I’ll take it.
Herbert, that curmudgeon in my head that really ought to pay rent is asking why I always wait until the last minute to submit.
See, WR and I never think we’re waiting until the last minute. We start off the month hitting the easiest and ones that are the most “us,” and we decide some of them are not our vibe.
But the later in the month it gets, the more journal curious we get and soon we’re like, “Hey, you look kinda cute.”
Maybe we didn’t think we were ready to submit another chapbook just now. Maybe we really didn’t see the food-through-tech call for poems (how did we miss that one?) until now.
You want feminist poems? Here, hold this, I know we have some in here somewhere.
Strange, weird finds? Yup, probably at the bottom of the poetry trunk. (Imagine the maid going through the trunk in Titian’s Venus of Urbino; I had to hunt all over the Uffizi to find the painting, but it’s there. WR would’ve used a map.)
And WR and I know this makes us a cliché , but last minute gives us the impetus to submit now, now, now!
Speaking of Coke Zero (which we were above, so don’t accuse me of yet another breakneck topic shift), I walked by the cooler at the café today and ran back to it, sure I had seen a familiar red-and-black label.
“Is that for me?” I asked the barista.
I had been campaigning for them to stock Coke Zero for my Dirty Diet that has somehow become my default drink. (If you know me, you know the very last thing I need is coffee AND Coke Zero together.)
Yes, they ordered it for me, but I guess I will let others buy it, too. LOL. I actually wore my Coke Zero earrings in there like billboards and literally asked if they would stock it.
Now I need to have the other café carry it. I forgot to mention it to the owner.
The temperature started out chilly, so I, rational woman that I am, started out indoors at the café while I ate my berry banana bowl.
Just as it was warming up, I picked up my laptop to move outdoors and the most gorgeous bird flew by. I don’t think it was a bluejay, but I caught a glimpse of blue, so maybe?
I really ought to learn my birds better, I suppose.
Anyway, there are about five more markets WR would really like me to submit to before the evening is through. She hates seeing those countdowns.
I may or may not get through them. She has me snorting Coke…Zero, that is.
Oh, and guess what? JOHN GREEN HAS ANNOUNCED HIS NEWEST PROJECT – he has written a novel FOR ADULTS!!! Final-freakin’-ly!
He’s calling it Hollywood, Ending, and apparently it debuts on Sept. 22. While I’m way too excited for it, also, Sir, I just submitted a poem today based on your last book. Don’t make my work obsolete just yet, please. 😂
Also, shhh…but I might have just pre-ordered a signed copy AND, since he says that The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) by Warhol was important to this book, I ordered a crusty old paperback of it for $2, too, before everyone else rushes for them.
Wait, is that just a me-thing?
Ok, WR is insisting I get no supper or no snacks (usually her thing, but whatever) until I make more headway on the submission front.
Today I feel like I’ve been chasing poems across pages,
shoving words rudely, cutting whole sections and only stopping to wonder later if I have a copy of the original. I mostly do.
One poem was trying to have three centers.
One was hyperfixating on Tupperware, a couple of prose sentences trying to say what I still have to figure out how to compress. I’m mulling…
One was in pretty good shape, but did benefit from pruning and a slight expansion.
One made me want to go through a drive-thru for fries and dipping sauce.
One features a writer that I said if he’s ever canceled, it will take me down. He seems avuncular, but you never know.
Another poem I was finding my way through, doing brief tweaks to make it more immediate, when I received news I’d been waiting for and yet made me decide today is not the day for revising that particular poem.
The news? We finally know the cause of death for my youngest sister: basically, her poor heart just gave out due to all it had been through.
It has not been an easy day.
The poem I was working on when I found out was “Driftwood,” which mentions a tragedy I witnessed the aftermath of.
As I said, this is not the day for that poem.
Funny how life can swing between “Oh my god, I love that there are bookstores” to this.
The internet is out at the café, still. I am using my phone as a fitful hotspot.
I am grateful for language, even when it proves inadequate.
I am grateful for answers, for results that, no matter how tragic, are not what I had feared.
Another poem I was working on was “To Power the Human Heart.” It received a vein today that it hadn’t formerly had.
There’s a disconnect between who my heart thinks I am and the things I have to know.
I’ve been listening to an audiobook, Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, recommended, I think, by Kendra Adachi. The narrator keeps the voices, even during the tough stuff, upbeat and hopeful.
That’s who I am, at core.
Maybe that’s all my writing is, is my brain and body rejecting anything that interferes with what I wish the world were. With the things I’ve had to face.
Not in the abstract, craft-book way, but in the very practical, slightly stubborn way that shows up when I’m reading. If a page looks too crowded, thick with description, heavy with detail, I can feel my attention flipping pages.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate beautiful, lyrical sentences. I do. I just don’t always want to work that hard to get through them. If they’re stacked, they better feed, you know?
Someone mentioned white space recently, just in general, that they don’t care for too much of it. That it can feel thin, maybe even a little suspect. Someone whose opinion I pay attention to because it never fails to make my work stronger. Writers, get you someone like that. A True Writing North.
So ok, I added “Think about white space” to my agenda. And here we are.
Wouldn’t you know it, while I was musing about what that might mean for my own work, John Green mentioned white space on the latest episode of his and Hank’s podcast, Dear Hank and John. He said, “I think Kurt Vonnegut said the best thing about his books was the white space, and I kind of agree with that. White space can go a long way in a book.” He went on to say it’s underrated.
You could argue that Green and I have very different ambitions, and you would not be wrong. But Vonnegut and I maybe do not. Which means this is definitely worth considering.
The use (or not) of white space could have me riffing for pages, because it is no small thing and it intersects with so many other craft areas, but let’s just keep it simple for today.
Historically, I think I have tended to write best in scene. Dialogue, choreography. I’ve let these things do the heavy lifting.
I adore interiority, pretty much can’t get enough of it (I’m always so greedy to know what others are actually thinking), but I have about talked myself out of writing so much of it because I could go on for pages, no end in sight and oh wait, is that what I’m doing right here, right now?
I have never been a “let me describe the curtains for three paragraphs” kind of writer. In fact, if a writer does that, I am for sure skipping a few pages.
Now I’m asking myself what so much white space is sacrificing. And what could I DO with it! Word Raccoon is practically swooning at the idea. Why, she could create word sketches and tableaux. She could let the cast of the sky, or a chair tilted toward the street, a bag with a notebook half in, half out, say something that the dialogue doesn’t. Or, it could contradict it.
I notice these things all the time. Probably more than people like, I fear. I mean, my poetry is built on noticing. But when it comes to novel writing, I don’t always trust myself to know what details are important. I just know how exhausting it is to feel myself in a storm of details that don’t give me anything but seasickness when I read.
I don’t want to write longer passages about setting unless it serves the novel. I don’t want to slow everything down or pad out the prose so it looks more serious. That feels like putting on someone else’s coat and pretending it fits.
But I am interested in the idea that the world of a scene might carry a little of the truth alongside the people in it. Probably more than a little.
It could be fun.
Word Raccoon is growling, uncertain now.
Slow down, WR. No one is taking anything away from you. You’re still in charge of the poetry.
But in my mind, I’m adding gold curlicues of language to my margins, and it’s gorgeous.
Gorl, you better fill that canvas! That’s what it’s there for.
Now if you will pardon me and Word Raccoon, we are going to go make Dutch oven lentils. We have discovered there are 5 bags hiding in the cupboards, both brown and red, as well as various potatoes sprouting and half an onion that hasn’t been paying rent in the fridge but probably should. It’s “clean those winter cupboards out” season.
(I’ve never tried a lentil loaf. Should I give it a go?)
Let’s not talk about how many bottles of salad dressing I found. And I thought I had just finished the last bottle. Sigh. (I make my own sometimes, too, of course.)
First up, I’m delighted to share my poem “Vincent in His Brother’s Arms,” published in the inaugural issue of Two Children. I’m truly grateful to be included in this beautiful new publication alongside such thoughtful, talented writers.
If you’re so inclined, I hope you’ll take a moment to read, and maybe even sign up to support this promising new venture.
A gentle heads-up: the poem takes an…earthy turn (for symbolic reasons, I promise). You might want to have your smelling salts handy, Aunt Erma. 😉
Here’s a photo of the too-short time I spent at his grave. I’m so happy the brothers are buried together. It just seems right. (It was SO HOT and it was a mile’s walk up the hill…yes, my face is BLAZING) But it was one of the most solemn things I’ve ever experienced, their side-by-side graves. Vincent is one of those artists I just feel protective of, you know?
In other exciting poetry news, “Renewal” has found a home. This was an early poem I wrote, and I’ve been hoping to find just the right place for it. I am happy to report that Los Angeles-based aesterion has accepted both it AND “Grieving Does Nothing for the Dead for their April 2026 issue. Yay!!
Did I cry happy tears when I read this acceptance? Yes, yes, I did.
Remember the collection I’m working on, The Optative Mood? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was a bit chagrined to discover a poem titled “The Conditional” by none other than Ada Limón featured in a recent newsletter from the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.
I don’t honestly recall having read it before, but first: it’s wonderful. And second: great minds? (The titles aren’t the same, and neither are the poems, but it does make me think some ideas are simply…waiting in the air, ready to be written.)
So my doctor has switched my arthritis medicine (glamorous stuff, right?), and I haven’t been writing as much and I feel…not myself just now. Word Raccoon says I will be fine for the few weeks it should take for things to kick in, and in the meantime, she’s consented to read novels, even though she’d prefer to write poems.
She can be an overly sensitive thing, and sometimes she just doesn’t know what to do when encountering others who are not raccoons. She wants to dance because she’s overjoyed at seeing them, but that is frowned upon in public. At the very least, she wants to smile, but what if she’s not supposed to notice the non-raccoon? She worries. She wonders.
Silly raccoon.
Eh, maybe I should let her loose on the poetry after all. How much harm could she do?
Speaking of, I’m thinking of sharing “notebook poems” posts weekly, things I’ve written that I’m not likely to seek publication for but want to share, like sketches.
While we’re in the early, fickle part of spring, a raccoon can hope that things will only warm up from here. She still needs her sweater on the porch. And, well, so many other things.
Ah, being able to write on the porch of my favorite café on a MARCH morning! Even if I was distracted by construction equipment. My dad used to love watching that sort of thing, and I found myself taking photos as if I could show him.
I did manage to write a couple of poems, the bones of them, anyway.
It was wonderful, as always, to see the signs of spring out and about. Does a heart good.
I also made a trip to the library today. This week I have read three short novels; spring is perfect for quick reads. But having finished one today (a little gem), I wanted more.
There’s something about cruising the new reads shelves that is thrilling. You mean I can take as many books home as I like and keep them until I’ve read them? Best. Date. Ever. LOL.
Here’s a photo of my stack. Don’t judge – I take chances on books from the library that I might not otherwise read. There are a couple in this stack that I’m not sure about. Bet you can guess which ones. But we’ll see.
As I left the library, a young woman was pruning the flowers and basil, and she handed me two yellow flowers of her own accord. Such a sweet gesture.
Part of me feels guilty reading so much, but part of me is very aware that this is filling-the-well season. When I start reading deeply, it’s because my writing asks for it. As you can imagine, this also makes me want to get back to writing my novel.
Reading a novel is like climbing inside of someone’s mind. While it’s a highly curated version, it’s also intimate. (That could be its own blogpost.)
Right now, I’m thinking about novels and white space, an important topic that I’m grateful was brought to my attention. John Green just touched on this on his podcast this week as well as an aside, so I need to sit down and capture my thoughts on it. Not today, which was a vapor of a day.
Word Raccoon says white space sounds boring as hell. What does she know? She’s too busy feasting her eyes on spring and all it brings to life.
It’s threatening to be warmer out today, but right now it’s very much not, and both of my pairs of slippers are on the porch.
There is no strategic reason they are there. They ended up there, but to bring them in means introducing cold air into the house before 5 am. No, Herbert, I have no idea why I am up before 5 am. I just am. But if I get the slippers and bring them in, they will eventually warm up, yes?
These are the things that flummox me and shouldn’t, but they are throat-clearing before the writing.
Shoes in, WR says I chose the wrong pair and why did I put them on and take them off off off until they warm.
Word Raccoon and I woke later than usual on Monday morning but still somehow ended up at the café an hour early. I was grabbing my keys when I heard the neighbor’s garage door go up and she leaves at 7:39. I don’t know why I know that.
Then WR whispered that while I’d remembered my jewelry, I had totally forgotten makeup, so I obliged her, but we still arrived early.
The café was just the right amount of chaos and company.
The internet was down, so at first I was puzzled as to what to do since my phone claims it can be used as a hotspot but is a total slow pain about it. A friend who was also working there offered to let me hop on his if I needed it, but I decided to make WR experience what life was like before internet.
It started with morning pages, something we haven’t done in so long, just to get us to wording.
Lighthearted, people coming in and out, nodding, making conversation with AirPods in so if you didn’t talk too much they wouldn’t be offended.
Meeting the writer daughter from NYC that you’ve heard about for years from a friend, commiserating about how long books on submission can take and agents and all things writing, admiring her Erewhon bag, regaling her with tales of Buc-ee’s, its opposite, though you’ve never been to one.
In between, finding a foothold in the day’s writing. We do not demand words do anything. But sometimes we long to see them bloom.
Speaking of blooms, the electric blue squill flowers are taking over the yard. It’s brave, the squill, coming out before the other flowers, like a scout, testing to see if it’s safe.
I will miss them when they are gone. I feel like I’m not supposed to say that, because what right do I have to say it; they’re not my flowers. They’re just wild flowers.
But it’s true. I freaking miss them when they’re gone. Even just seeing them in the wild is comforting. Silly WR.
This poetry collection idea is either clever or obvious. The first part was fun, so I don’t really care. The second part took place in a second location yesterday. Which explains a lot. (Yes, true crime lovers, that was a bad pun.)
Without further ado, here is the current TOC for this very rough chapbook I’m working on. (Many of these may get amended titles, obv.)
Optative Instructions
In the Subjunctive Mood
The Imperative Mood
The Indicative Mood
The Interrogative
The Declarative
The Passive Voice
The Future Perfect
The Future, Perfect
FRAGMENTS
The Vocative
The Optative
Present Continuous
Active Voice (Featuring Voiceless Fricatives)
The Negative
Ellipsis (Your Native Language)
The Conditional Wing
The Zero Conditional (Happens Every Time)
The First Conditional Future, Possible
The Second Conditional
Third Conditional (Imagined Past)
Mixed Conditional
At least it’s less “objectionable” than a poem I wrote over the weekend, “Necromancer Duties.”
I know. The newest collection’s poem titles sound positively vanilla by comparison.
Here’s what the accidental framework is doing for me. It’s making me write more intentionally, slower, cooler, though come on, WR did sneak one F-bomb in.
Naturally, she wants to share it:
“Ah, fuck it./I hate the subjunctive.”
I looked at a few of the poems yesterday, said no thank you to revision, not yet, and that’s when I wrote the conditional poems.
Will the collection turn into something? Will they behave? Will I regain my revision powers that are sadly slacking on all fronts?
Stay tuned.
Also, not to pivot wildly, but look at this owl mug I got in yesterday to review. I am not reviewing it here. I am simply saying it is both adorable and enormous, and that Frida finger puppet has bravely agreed to serve as a scale model. Makes me look forward to tea time.
I am considering placing Word Raccoon into Creative Witness Protection.
This is not a decision I make lightly.
She has been a loyal, if unofficial, co-conspirator in my artistic life for some time now. She has assisted in poems, blog posts, chapbooks, and at least one emotional incident involving a grocery store parking lot and a line that refused to behave.
However.
Recent developments suggest escalation.
She is no longer content to sit quietly on the arm of the chair while I write like a reasonable person. She has begun insisting on… alternatives.
Songs, for example. (I’ve mentioned this before. But she persists.)
I will sit down to write a poem, a nice, contained poem with edges and intentions, and she will kick open the door like a tiny creative sheriff and say, “No. This is a chorus now.”
She’s been rooting around under my bed for my guitar. I told her a. My hands so no. b. I have NO CLUE the last time those strings were changed. So also no.
She has also taken to hoarding creative energy.
I do not mean this metaphorically.
I mean I will wake up with a perfectly respectable plan for the day, and she will have already spent the best parts of my mind on something that did not exist yesterday and now refuses to be ignored.
There are, at this time, no forms for this.
I have checked.
Additional concerns include:
A tendency to escalate emotional tone without prior authorization
Rewriting priorities mid-sentence
Unexpected kitchen singing with a whisk.
(We will not be elaborating on that last point at this time. The file is open. The file is… thick.)
Naturally, I have begun to explore options.
Witness Protection seems appropriate.
A new name. A quiet life. Something low-stakes. I would say I am sending her to an “exotic” pet rescue, but she would escalate that into something worse in her mind and cling to my shoulder like that parrot to Niles’s head on Frasier.
Perhaps she could become an Ordinary Productivity Squirrel. (Hear me out.)
She could live in a beige office park of the soul, where the lighting is soft and nothing unexpected happens. She could process manageable thoughts. She could allow me to finish a task from beginning to end without introducing a bridge, a refrain, or an existential aside made of shredded cheese and shredded thoughts.
I presented this plan to her.
She declined.
She cited poor snack conditions and a general lack of “vibe.”
She also informed me that she is not, in fact, the problem.
This is inconvenient.
Because the truth, which I was hoping to avoid for at least another week, is that she is not wrong.
The problem is not that she is unruly.
The problem is that she keeps insisting on a life that is louder than the one I can neatly manage.
She does not believe in staying in one lane.
She does not respect genre.
She does not understand why something that could be a poem should not also be a song, or why something that could be said should be said quietly.
She has been asked (and not just by me) if EVERYTHING is really a ten for her and she says yes, yes, YES!
She does not see the point of behaving when there is something to make.
And I, unfortunately, am harboring her until decisions are made.
So for now, she remains “at large.”
If you encounter her, do not approach: she may bite your shoelaces.
She will offer you a poem when you meant to write an email. She will hand you a song when you asked for silence.
She will be very convincing.
I am still deciding whether to send her to that program.
But between us,
I probably won’t. She’s a goodhearted beastie, even if she is a bit much.
Even for me.
You know what’s not too much? The fabulous news that one of my early poems, “All In” has found a home in an upcoming anthology, Indiana Bards Poetry Anthology 2026. Many thanks to IBPA! The poem is one of my special ones, and I’m grateful it will have a larger life now.
The calendar doesn’t move the way it used to. Now it has spikes embedded in it.
Dates arrive with weight already attached. Birthdays. Death days. Anniversaries. Holidays that still show up but don’t bring everyone with them. I feel them coming sometimes before I remember them.
The calendar remembers every damn thing.
Today (Sunday) would have been my sister Tammy’s birthday. My eldest sister.
So we went out to the cemetery, cleaned things up a little, talked to her like we always do.
A vase on her grave had broken, likely in the last windstorm. A stake in the ground was bent. I straightened what I could. I wanted it to look right before her daughter came out later.
While we were there, we cleaned my parents’ bench too. Wiped it down. Threw away old and worn decorations that had stayed too long in the weather. Said hello to the rest of the family.
It may seem silly, decorating graves. But it feels like something you can do when you can’t do anything else.
Just a few days before that, St. Patrick’s Day came and went. That used to be my parents’ anniversary.
The dates keep coming whether I’m ready or not. I’m trying not to be overly dramatic, but some sting more than others, and I haven’t figured out yet which ones are going to catch me by the throat.
Today, after the cemetery I sat on the porch in the gorgeous sunshine finishing George Saunder’s Vigil because it is due back to the library tomorrow and can’t be renewed.
That felt apt, although it was simultaneously a tough read for today. But I finished the short novel. (I was 50 pages in and it’s only just over 170 pages, so I couldn’t see taking it back when I was already so far in.)
In Vigil, someone looks back on a life from the edge of it, trying to understand what mattered and what can’t be changed. It circles the idea that everything was inevitable, even as it leaves room to wonder if that’s comfort or something else. (I’m intentionally being vague.)
There’s talk of inevitability. Of “elevation,” a slippery term in the novel that I’m not sure is ever completely defined in it. (Maybe it was; I wasn’t reading as carefully as usual today.) What I got out of the word is basically spiritual transcendence, getting “above” life, mercy, something like that?
I kept wondering who the comforter (Jill “Doll” Blaine) was trying to comfort when she said everything was inevitable.
There were things hinted at in her former life that we could only feel. Things she may not have wanted to look at directly.
And I found myself thinking that maybe the way the word elevation is used in the story could be termed as denial, just as “inevitability” may well be a way of trying to escape responsibility.
Or maybe they’re both something softer than that and I can’t see it today. Maybe it’s just the only way a person can keep going. (Does that make sense?)
The book was a little like As I Lay Dying, a little stream of consciousness, and a lot like Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunder’s first novel. Inventive, descriptive. You have to pay attention, unless you just ride the stream. That’s an option.
Grief doesn’t accept stage directions. If it did, I would have given it marching orders. As it is, I try to dance with it instead, even though I alternate on days like this between tears and grumpiness.
Grief doesn’t rise where you expect it to rise or resolve where you think it should. It doesn’t care that the library book is due tomorrow. It doesn’t wait until you’re ready to feel it. And the year doesn’t smooth itself back out. The calendar remembers for me.
I try to honor the family in the ways that are still available. Cleaning. Straightening. Showing up. Saying their names out loud.
And I try to be patient with myself on the days when I’m off. I don’t know if that’s elevation or denial. I just know it’s what I have. It doesn’t change anything. But it matters.
That brief book review in the middle of this post is not meant disrespectfully; that’s just my way of handling the loss.
After slipping the library book in the dropbox (they have a hold ready for me to pick up tomorrow, a juicy one, so I can’t have any overdue items out and I wouldn’t anyway), I took advantage of my remaining restlessness to drop some items off at a donation bin and vacuum and wash my car.
My heart still aches, but they haven’t invented a wash for that yet, not that I know of.
I admit it: I am breadcrumbing HelloFresh. I buy a box or two. I call it off. They email me. Text me. I leave them on read
But also? I’m still thinking about them.
I click on everything they post. Ah, mangoes this week.
Wait, are they making One-Pan Mango Pork Salsa Tacos with someone else? Who is that in the background? Enlarge, enlarge… have they replaced me?
Is someone else eating their Ancho BBQ Burgers with Bacon? I thought that was our dish.
I definitely didn’t venge-text Blue Apron, “wyd?”
NOT AN ACTUAL DEPICTION OF A MEAL SERVICE BOX.
When I do go back (and we both know it’s when, not if), I’m going to insist on that deep discount and free shipping they keep dangling.
Every time I tell them we’re through (we’ve broken up more often than Kelli and Ryan on The Office), they try to be mature and ask: What could we have done better?
I try the “it’s me, not you,” before admitting, “Okay, it’s mostly you.” I only like prescriptive meals for a limited time. By week’s end, I’m freewheeling with the remaining ingredients: cilantro potato soufflé in tortillas?
No?
Speaking of, there’s always too much cilantro. Ditto garlic.
Also? I hate that you don’t put “use by” dates on ground beef.
What if I don’t cook it tonight? Is tomorrow too late? The day after? I need to know!
And no, I don’t want your prepared meals. Jesus. You’re better than that.
That time you forgot my almonds and credited my account instead of sending them out? I didn’t want digital jewelry. I wanted my pumpkin spiced almonds! I’m kinda not over that.
You email me. Text me. Mail me letters. That almost always sends me to your website, and youknowit.
You say I’ll be back.
Maybe.
Because I already miss your Fully Loaded Beef Taquitos.
Too bad you gave me the recipe. I can make them by myself without having to use scissors to open every one of the ten tiny packets.
I admit it: the first few days after the box arrives, I can’t keep my hands off it. You promise layered flavors, new techniques. You deliver.
Even with the ever-present sour cream, you still surprise me. That Crispy Chicken Milanese? Well okay…
You’ll keep working me with discounts, thirst-trap photos of butternut ravioli, drizzled with brilliance and a hint of nutmeg.
You’ll catch me on a random late August afternoon and I’ll picture it: just the two of us in the kitchen, that huge recipe card I didn’t ask for but don’t hate, even if it’s a waste of paper.
I’ll cave. My fingers will say what my mind refuses. I’ll accept your free shipping and be deep into debating pasta or chicken before I know it.
And if I don’t get back to you soon enough and you presumptuously send me a fricking box you picked out while I’m on vacation and Word Raccoon gets into it and strews trash across the yard?
dremadrudge.com 
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