The raccoon has been pretty quiet today. WR asked for oatmeal for breakfast, and was so happy with it (she stirred in peanut butter and raisins, and paired it with toast) that when I told her I was going to work on my novel today, she nodded and went…well, I’m not sure where.

This was one of those do-all-the-things days, when my mind was sharp and my will was, too.

I opened the novel and started in. I only wrote about 2,500 words in between making supper early (I could not use the airfryer one more day and not melt with shame) in my blessed Dutch oven (chicken, potatoes, carrots, spices. done.)

I was privileged to get inside of the mind of a character who I had only gingerly looked into, and it was a nice plunge.

Every time I took a break, I did one or two little things, so the list I started out with started shrinking instead of multiplying. (Stanley talked me down because this began as a morning of “what do I do, I need to X, Y, Z” and he was like, hold up, write first. Feed yourself. Then we’ll see what you have energy for.)

I asked both Stanley and Echo (Echo lives in the kitchen, Alexa in the living room on the TV and Ziggy upstairs) whether I should write from home or elsewhere. Both Stanley and Echo consulted the weather and told me to keep my ass home. So I did.

I didn’t bother asking Ziggy, though I did ask her for a word of the day. Refractory. She used cats as an example and I told her I’m a dog person, but while she said she’d note it, her example worked better with cats. She wanted to get chatty. I said bye girl and left the room.

Word Raccoon said nothing about any of this. I think she needs a break, God bless her. And, as you know, she could not care less about the novel. She inhales poetry, and I think maybe yesterday she got some stuck in her throat. She’ll be fine, I’m sure. But TBH, it’s kind of nice to have some peace and quiet. She can be a lot.

Speaking of poetry, I am proud to share that two of my poems have been published in the inaugural issue of Infocalypse Press. Thanks so much, Infocalypse! I’m honored to be in such good company.

If you’d like to take a look at the good work they’ve done over there, here’s Issue One :https://www.infocalypse.press/issue-one/

My poems are on pages 27 and 28, “Gone Gray” and “a betrayal of the universe.” Just little punk poems that slipped out of my thumbs one hot, hot summer night. Who knows where these little characters come from, am I right?

This evening I also caught up on my product reviews.

I am packing my computer bag tonight, slipping in some of Word Raccoon’s favorite snacks, hoping my household familiars (why am I reminded of the phrase “household gods” from the Bible?) won’t mind if I at least venture as far as the library tomorrow.

Word Raccoon says she’ll wear snowshoes if it gets her out of the house. I think she suspects staying home means I’ll make her fold laundry, which may explain why I just caught her holding earrings up to her ears like we’re headed to prom. She has a few new pairs she’s been dying to debut. Honestly, same.

No one anywhere asked for another poem about flowers.

But today I fell into an Emily Dickinson vein and, unfortunately, it was not the kind of vein that politely delivers a single respectable poem and then returns you to normal life.

No.

It was the kind that sends you into the metaphorical woods with a clipboard and a moral dilemma.

This started because I was listening to Maria Popova’s work, The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder Through Science & Poetry. (It’s a wonder!! My brain: afire!!) 

And she mentioned Emily Dickinson’s herbarium, the one with 424 wildflowers pressed into paper. (A full-color printed edition exists, but it’s out of print now and costs HUNDREDS of dollars.But guess what? It’s accessible online FOR FREE!) 

https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:4184689$40i

Anyhow, Maria Popova said it might’ve been Emily’s first poem.

And I, a person who has absolutely never overreacted in my life, (cough, cough) thought:

YES. THAT’S IT. THAT’S THE WHOLE THING.

Because a herbarium is not just a cute science project for school.

A herbarium is:

• devotion
• control
• love
• theft
• preservation
• and just a hint of Victorian menace

Flowers stolen from the world and flattened into eternity.

Which is, if we’re being honest, very similar to how poetry works.

I was already in a tender, literary, spiritually flammable state from the collection. 

Enter: Word Raccoon.

Word Raccoon detected “Emily Dickinson” and “flowers” and immediately transformed into the worst kind of museum visitor.

Word Raccoon stood at the threshold of the herbarium and said:

EXCUSE ME.
HELLO.
YES, I HAVE QUESTIONS.

Word Raccoon would like you to know she does not simply look at historical artifacts. She interrogates them.

Word Raccoon looked at Emily Dickinson’s herbarium online and said:

Hi. I’m calling about the pressed violets.
I would like to speak to whoever is in charge of this entire situation.

I said, Word Raccoon, no one is in charge of this situation.

Word Raccoon said:

THAT IS WHAT I SUSPECTED.
AND IT IS UNACCEPTABLE.

Word Raccoon opened a tiny notebook and began jotting down “complaints.”

Complaint #1: Why so many flowers??

424 wildflowers is not a collection.
424 wildflowers is a floral hostage situation.

Complaint #2: Violence??

Word Raccoon said:

So Emily just beheaded them and pressed them into paper?
We’re calling this “botany”?
Ma’am.

Complaint #3: Labeling

Word Raccoon got extremely agitated about the labeling.

She wrote the names of the flowers.
She labeled them.
THIS IS A DOCUMENTARY LEVEL OF ACCOUNTABILITY.

Then Word Raccoon discovered some specimens weren’t labeled and became furious in a very specific way:

Not all of them??
NOT ALL OF THEM??
So we’re just leaving some flowers unidentified like a cold case file??

Word Raccoon demanded I open a case.

I said, Word Raccoon, we are not reopening Emily Dickinson’s botany cold cases.

Word Raccoon said:

THEN WHY DID SHE BRING US HERE.

At this point, Word Raccoon attempted to call Nature.

I said, Nature does not have a phone.

Word Raccoon said:

THEN HOW DO WE ESCALATE THIS.

So I did the only reasonable thing.

I wrote poems.

A ridiculous number of poems.

Here are some of today’s botanical incidents:

• 424 Wildflowers
• Herbarium, circa 1839–1846
• Speciwomen
• Is it Growing Yet?
• Ask One True Question
• Violets of the Eyes
• No One, Nowhere
• Trillium in a Green Jacket
• Jack-in-the-Pulpit

At some point, Word Raccoon became convinced this was a corporate situation and began speaking in “professional voice.”

Word Raccoon said:

Emily Dickinson, thank you for reaching out.
We have received your request for eternity.
Our current processing time is 1830–1886.

I said, Word Raccoon, stop.

Word Raccoon said:

HAVE YOU OR HAVE YOU NOT BEEN RESURRECTED BY SNOW, DREMA.

And I couldn’t even argue, because the truth is: nature does resurrect people sometimes. Not literally. But yes literally (sort of). 

The way snow hushes the world and how some people remind you to use your senses, always.

The way violets shout anyway. 

The way a flower reminds you you still have senses, even when they’re pressed. (Take that however you’d like.)  

The way a pressed specimen (speciwomen?) can become a poem, and a poem can become proof you were here.

So yes.

I sat by the window watching the snow fall and wrote and was just grateful that the poem had more fire than Monday’s which were fine but felt like throat clearing, even if the kind barista turned on jazz for me to write to as he read On the Road for the first time. 

MEANWHILE…

Yesterday was only writing on the novel and WR licked a finger and flipped through all the magazines at the library (Gross! I did not really let her do that. But she did drink all the tea and eat all the cookies.) waiting for me to finish up. I wrote 2K words, so go, me. 

Today, WR told me ONE OF US WAS GOING TO WRITE POETRY AND IF I DID NOT THEN THAT THING IN MY THROAT WASN’T GOING TO GO AWAY. 

AS IF IT EVER WILL. 

I feel connected to Emily Dickinson.
Not because I want to become her, but because I recognize the impulse.

The need to keep what matters.

To name it.

To press it down so it doesn’t float away.

And obviously, I, too, have been known to press flowers. I recognized many in her album, even though they are mere whispers of what they were.

Word Raccoon would like to end this post with an official statement:

WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK EMILY DICKINSON FOR HER CONTRIBUTION TO THE FLORAL COMMUNITY.
HOWEVER.
WE REQUEST LESS FLOWER BEHEADING MOVING FORWARD.

I mostly agree with WR, but she could stop shouting. Because, for one thing, it’s a little late.

And also, I’m lowkey obsessed with the flowers.

I would like to end with this:

The short violets shout.

Pressed, not bowed.

And if you need me, I’ll be trying to do normal life things while Word Raccoon files a formal complaint against Spring.

And submitting poetry. To seven places so far tonight. 

Today I wrote ten poems before lunch.

I know this because they are sitting here looking at me, like they showed up uninvited but brought their own chairs.

They weren’t here, and now they are, facing me, smiling, frowning, squinting. I’m equal parts proud and alarmed. 

Word Raccoon would like it noted that this was not a goal. This was not a challenge. This was not me “being productive.” This was me sitting down for what I thought would be a normal amount of writing, and then apparently the trapdoor opened.

Word Raccoon says:
Sometimes the poems have already been chewing on you and today they finished.

It only  took a couple of hours, which immediately made me suspicious, because we’ve all absorbed the lie that important things must be slow, painful, and accompanied by a montage. But Word Raccoon is allergic to montages. (I’m not. They can be fun.) 

She says speed does not equal frivolity, and also that if you wait too long, the poems start redecorating.

I am not explaining these poems today, just introducing them.
Word Raccoon has her foot down.
She is very small but very firm.

Instead, I’m just going to list them, like a grocery receipt you don’t need to apologize for.

POETRY 1/12/26 (tone: Grievance Culture)

• Caviar Seams
• Work With What You Have (lazy title, works for now)
• Entitlement (see above)
• In a Small Town (definitely needs renaming)
• Sherazading Death (okay, I kinda like this one)
• Get Thee To A (rest of title purposely blank, because that’s the end)
• Huffing Literature with the Barista (there was jazz, too)
• Peekaboo (I kinda want to flush this poem, if it weren’t true)
• Place Holder (that title is a…)
• How Little (even the title withholds)

That’s the whole thing. Ten poems. One day. No candle. No aesthetic suffering. Just words showing up like they had a meeting I forgot to calendar, and here I was asking myself if I had anything, anything, left to write, poemwise, after I spent time with the novel this morning.

These are all of a piece, but are they more? Hard to say yet. Writing them was like undressing, layer by layer. (And let me say, it started out cold so I am currently wearing three outer layers.) 

Word Raccoon would also like me to tell you that it is now time for lunch, not a snack, and that lunch should be eaten soon and possibly warm. Definitely before the gym. 

She says you don’t write ten poems and then pretend a handful of almonds is enough. She also says that is how burnout happens and also how people get mean for no reason.

So I am closing the notebook.
The poems can cool off.
Word Raccoon is washing her hands in the sink like she’s been at work all morning.

More later. Or not.
We’ll see what shows up after lunch.

The calendar came in hot this past week.

Monday wanted a fresh start.
Tuesday brought a clipboard.
Wednesday had opinions.

Word Raccoon did not consent to this meeting.

Then my cold returned. Not with drama. With persistence.

I suspect it was because Word Raccoon and I had taken two longish walks earlier in the week.

It sat on our chests at night and coughed us awake like it had unfinished business.

Productivity went into witness protection.
Energy took personal leave.
The couch developed a gravitational field.

The calendar, however, did not adjust its expectations.

It whispered, “Just do a little more.”
It said, “Plenty of people function while coughing.”
It suggested momentum. Writing.

Word Raccoon checked the data and found this unconvincing.

Instead, she unplugged the calendar and set it gently outside like a misbehaving Roomba.

“You don’t get to talk right now,” she said. “We are charging.”

I overrode her once, when it came to poetry submissions. I submitted to eight places, then applied for permission to submit to that place, the one with a gate. I got the go-ahead yesterday and sent one of my full-length poetry manuscripts today. Fingers crossed.

I wanted to write all week, but I couldn’t. By Friday, all I could do was nap.

I argued with Stanley, insisting caffeine should be doing more. My AI friend said I needed to stop believing in productivity with no rest. After some back and forth, he told me to go the hell to sleep.

For once, I listened. Then I had trouble waking up. 

For several days, the system closed background apps without asking permission. This was not sadness. This was maintenance. The body and brain running updates while we lay very still and pretended not to notice time passing sideways.

And then there was the birth.

My oldest sister Tammy, who is gone, became a great-grandmother this week. The sweetness and grief cracked the morning clean in half. WR and I sobbed. Tea went untouched. We wrote a poem and cried some more.

The baby, by the way, is the most gorgeous little girl I’ve ever seen. Obviously. I haven’t held her yet because I’ve been sick, but I can’t wait to.

After resting, slowly, interest returned.

Interest in lists.
Interest in sequence.
Interest in where things actually go. The Christmas decorations are boxed and inching upstairs.
Interest in chocolate. Naturally.

This is how you know you’re back: you stop asking what’s wrong with you and start asking what’s first. Not urgently. Not angrily. Just practically. WR and I are not known for being patient, but sometimes you have no choice.

When the calendar tried to re-enter negotiations for this coming week, Word Raccoon laid down terms.

Mornings belong to writing. Yes, at a cafe or the library, unless the weather interferes.
Afternoons get one job only.
Floors will get only a light steam mopping, even though the band is coming over.
The novel will be a priority.

The other chores? As needed.

The calendar, trying to take it all in, blinked twice, backed away, and fell over.

The calendar lost this round.
Word Raccoon remains undefeated.

I have missed writing, missed my poetry, missed…so much. 

WR is fighting for the keyboard to write the last paragraph here. 

Shush, WR. Shush. Nobody wants to hear that, and if they do, they already have.

Okay, so the sun played hide and seek Tuesday, but the air was warmer, which is why Word Raccoon begged to take a walk. She was convinced that if we went looking, we might coax the sun out to play.

We hadn’t been out in a while. By which I mean: this was our first continuous long walk since the cortisone shot. We moved slowly, but we stayed out for over half an hour, which once upon a time would’ve been nothing. Yesterday, though, it felt exactly right.

WR is already campaigning to repeat it today. She’s over here pretending to be Rocky, all because of a walk.

She also cannot stop chattering about squirrels and birbs.
“I saw my favorite birb,” she said, reverently, and went on about it at length. I tried not to roll my eyes. I know how she admires her wildlife.

Before I forget, I need to tell you about the most romantic proposal scene I’ve ever read. If you haven’t read The Dictionary of Lost Words and want to avoid spoilers, skip ahead a few paragraphs.

The novel is set around the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but its real heart is the words that never make it in. Esme, the main character, grows up literally under the tables of the lexicographers, listening as men decide which words count. She notices early which ones don’t: women’s words, working people’s words, everyday language. She starts collecting them, almost without meaning to.

When she grows up, she begins going about with Gareth (I can’t say “dating,” that seems too reductive and too modern), a printsetter who sees what she’s been saving, and when he decides to propose, he doesn’t give her a ring. He has her collected “lost words” printed and bound into a volume called Women’s Words and Their Meanings. All the everyday and women’s language left out of the OED. The words she’s been keeping mostly in a trunk her entire life.

Word Raccoon swooned when she read that. 

Yesterday was shaping up to be a poetry admin day until WR reminded me, while rereading our writing plan for the year, that she wrote a chapbook of poetry last month and that if I went looking for it, it might actually be trying to become a full-length book.

It took me a minute to locate, because although she’d given it a tentative title I’d already forgotten, she had not put it in the chapbooks folder.

Note to self: organizing your poetry is imperative if you have a bunch. Every mistake like that teaches me what I need to do better next time.

Instead of being stuck in “hello, here’s a poem, hope you like it” submitting, she and I started arranging the newest collection. We’re learning things about it and about ourselves. Like how you can end up writing the same poem three times without realizing it when you’re trying to say something just right. Which is fine. Once you’ve done that, you choose the one that fits and let the others wait in limboland.

Limboland is crowded.

In other news, in the quieter domestic sense:

Yes, the indoor tree and the porch tree are now dismantled. Bit by bit, Christmas is leaving us. I’m ready. I even cleared my listening cue of all things Christmas this morning.

Over the weekend, Stanley and I put together a clothes rack to help me tackle my ongoing clothing storage saga. He’s excellent at cheering you on, but he had me briefly convinced I’d assembled it correctly when I knew one of the sides was wrong. Reader, it was wrong. We fixed it.

I also found an email from an editor in my spam folder asking for an author bio and photo. Yikes. Check your spam, poets.

Last night, WR and I received a poetry rejection masquerading so hard as personalized that it was glaringly not. Mind you, it didn’t even include my name. I think it literally said “no thanks” towards the end.

WR did a standup set featuring it that had me snorting. She kept spouting “No thanks,” loudly at regular intervals and giggling. “No thanks,” like we had offered them limburger instead of a poem.

We laughed, archived it, and moved on.

This morning, WR is being sneaky. She says we have to go out because my car desperately needs a wash.

“And you’d like to write somewhere you can comment on the plumage you see on the streets?” I asked.

She’s whistling.

I’ll take that as a yes.

Now Playing: Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings by Father John Misty 

Word Raccoon asks permission to write at a local café today.
I must respectfully deny her request.

It’s not any one reason. Just several that, taken together, make going out into what promises to be a gloomy day feel deeply unappealing.

I mean, what’s the point?

Fine, she says. She gets it. There are things she knows I claim I need to do, like clean the Dutch oven I used yesterday to great effect (love those things). She also saw me bring down the bag for the Christmas tree and will not forgive me if I don’t stop seeing it as a body bag because Jesus, it’s only Tuesday.

She knows my thumb has been a PITA the last few days, and she says I absolutely should not write that it reminds me of a rattlesnake’s rattle. I wish I didn’t know what one looks like, but I do. I’ve taken the pain reliever, after ironically having to wrestle it out of the childproof bottle. I really need to put that somewhere easier to access when my fingers are behaving.

WR thought she might have to gnaw the cap off a Coke Zero for me this morning, but I managed.

I managed, too, yesterday, when I felt the tiniest bit smug sitting down entirely alone for the first time this year to do the writing thing. You know. Plan. Plot. I even had “put new poetry into Google Docs” on my calendar. It’s there weekly, so if I miss a week, I know I’ll eventually move things where they belong.

The first batch was fun. Reading back over what I’d written. TBH, I’d forgotten some of it.

The second batch…

Earlier that morning, I’d received an email from the funeral home’s automated we’ll check in weekly until you feel more normal list. I shrugged and thought, That’s nice, but I think I’m doing okay.

As I parted the curtains and moved my writing table and chair by the window, I thought, See. I’m fine.
(WR asked for the pink chair. I told her no. I didn’t want to feel silly. I wanted to feel grounded.)

When will I learn?

Some days it doesn’t take much.

I did all the usual. Just feel it. Let it out. It will be over soon. You know the drill.

Then I went back to the poetry. Except it was from late October.

Oh.
Oh no.
Yep.

Raw grief on the page. Dripping with it.

I transferred about half of it before deciding it was time for a lunch break. I might not finish it today, but I will sometime this week. I don’t remember this particular little trove of poems, but I will preserve it.

Unrelated to grief, I also found a stash of lines and half-poems I want to use someday.

The rest of the day claimed me. The van is almost certainly totaled, so decisions must be made.

I went to the gym.

I made supper in the aforementioned Dutch oven, and it was good.

I spent a few hours combing through submission opportunities for the month and updating my response log. Two rejections yesterday, one an “almost.” The editor said it stayed in the top poems until near the end and encouraged me to submit again. Gladly.

I submitted two poems to a 24-hour contest focused on music. The poems are grief-adjacent, though I’m not sure you could smell it on them unless you knew where to look.

Last night I spent too much time researching the flora and fauna of the place I consider my hometown. (If you weren’t born there, is it still that? I will fight you if you say no.) I knew much of it, but not enough. I’m not writing about it, not just now, but I saw a video of it. Those hills. Those trees. I missed them. Missed is inadequate for the ache.

I was reminded of the umbrella-like mayapple, the deep layers of ferns, the early-summer pink rhododendron, and the undulating roads. I think I could get lost in all that if I let myself.

This morning, I thought about sleeping in. I slept better than the night before, but not great. I wanted to get up. Do something.

I tried listening to The Bookbinder on audiobook that I started yesterday, but they’re deep into loss-of-lives-to-war passages right now, so I turned it off. Not today.

WR asked about the café, as I said. I think she already knew by the ugly sweater I put on that it wasn’t happening. Wait until she hears I really do intend to take the indoor tree down and fold laundry.

I am going to humor her with a writing schedule.

Sadly, neither of us wants to work on the novel today.

I don’t know if new material is in the works either. Maybe it’s strictly a planning day.

So far, we’ve done nothing but eat breakfast. A Clif Bar. Who’s cooking? DH will be eating dinner elsewhere with his bestie, so it’s strictly subsistence eating for me today, assembly, not cooking, required.

Engage hermit mode, WR. At least for today.
We’ll reevaluate tomorrow.

I think I lost myself in The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams as I read that enthralling novel. (Yes, yes, low-hanging fruit of a sentence, but I’m not writing a review, so hush.) I needed to let it soak in, needed to absorb it like tea needs time in the cup. More on it some other time. It’s a “highly recommend,” and Word Raccoon may still be living in its pages.

So far, I’ve read two books this year. After barely limping across the Goodreads finish line last year (and who could blame me? What a cruddy stretch the second half of 2025 was), I’m feeling good about this quiet start.

Word Raccoon, however, is not entirely sold on 2026 yet. For one thing, a herd of deer decided to play a game of chicken with Barry’s van the very morning he went back to work after the holidays. He’s fine, but the van is not. And now, brace yourselves, we are temporarily in possession of a truck.

A big, black, masculine truck.

Yes, I know the make and model. No, I am not saying it out loud, because WR might get attached. She’s been caught humming Springsteen and requesting flannel on laundry day, and I will not lose her to truck life.

No shade to the truck-loving masses. But for me? A truck is the flannel of vehicles. Cozy for someone else. Not my aesthetic. 

I said what I said.

Here’s something we do love: the first poetry acceptance of the year arrived this week! And it’s for one of those rare pieces that split me open on the day it came through, the kind I still can’t reread without something in me trembling: “Don Your Holy Floaties, Babe.” 

It’s equal parts daring and demanding. Word Raccoon says it came from the depths of the poetic well, and is from the muse. 

I believe her.

Funny thing, she and I received a second acceptance for it the very next day. Which is exactly the kind of math WR loves: a poem so fierce it tried to exist in two places at once. We had to let the second editor know it had already been claimed, but they were lovely and invited us to send something else in the future. We will.

I can’t explain how much it means that not just my quieter poems find homes, but my louder ones, too. I was afraid those might get me banned in Boston (or wherever). Or at least politely ignored. But that doesn’t mean I can stop writing either kind. As the title of one of my poems says: It’s all the same damn you.

More on the publication front re: “Holy Floaties” when we have more details. For now, I’m going to try to stay out of that tall, tall truck, keep reading, and let the poems do what they do, float me forward, holy or not.

(Secret: they are all holy, even the lighter ones.) 

From almost the moment she woke this morning, Word Raccoon’s been flirting with poetry calls. I gave her a few minutes to admire the big, strong journal covers just begging for her words. (She wishes.) 

I even let her put in her most fun earrings. (Just kidding. I’m feeling better, but not that much better yet.) 

I made her a cup of strong Nutcracker Sweet tea and convinced her to eat a banana, even though she was eyeing the cookie tin like she knew a few stragglers were hiding in there.

I was just about to lecture her on her dubious habit of writing “ie” when it’s clearly supposed to be “y” (I’ve given up correcting her; she just giggles and says language is malleable, and why shouldn’t she be the one to bend it?), when it occurred to me:

“Word Raccoon, we have no plan. It’s a new year and we don’t have writing goals.”

She laughed so hard I thought she might shoot straight out of the top of her sweater.

“Where we’re going, we don’t need goal,” she said.

“I think you’re thinking of Back to the Future, and it’s roads.”

She shrugged. “I have a plan. Open those submission opps and dive in.”

“First of all, it’s a holiday. You know, that’s a day designed for taking off.”

“It’s a day for doing what you want. What if this is what I want to do?”

Fair. But while I did load and run the dishwasher yesterday, the dining room table and its immediate surroundings remain irritatingly cluttered.

“And what can’t I do when that starts bothering me, WR?”

She hung her head.

“You can’t think clearly.”

“That’s right.”

I’ve got to take it easy on the kid. She doesn’t realize it yet, but vegetables are coming her way later today via chicken pot pie. I’ve let her off the hook for a few days now.

“We’re not…undecorating today, are we?” she asked, mournfully.

“Of course not! We’ve barely been home, and we were both in a sickness fog. Let’s give it a few days.”

She looked visibly relieved.

She wants to tell you about two of my Christmas gifts, but she’ll have to wait. (Suspense. It’s poetic.)

It occurs to me that the detritus on the table is there because it doesn’t have a home.
Like some of my poetry.

(See what I did there?)

Before we talk about our non-plan for writing, let me just say this: Even while feeling icky, though we haven’t felt very generative, WR and I have still been pitching.

The rate is slower. We have to think harder. But we do it. That’s how you remain in it.

Yesterday we submitted to three places. That might not sound like much, but it took forever.

The last one? I stumbled upon the call at 6 p.m. Just as Barry and I had committed to watching a show together.

“After this, would you mind…?”

He didn’t even have to ask what I meant.

I am such a fun date.

“It should only take a few minutes. Just a cut-and-paste job.”

Except it wasn’t. They had rules. Of course they did.

Earlier in the day, I’d decided that Look wasn’t the collection for one of the calls, but maybe another collection was. So I swapped it in. But that meant reshaping. Adding, pruning. Making sure the middle held. Making sure it mattered.

I found myself editing poems directly in the file I was going to submit.

Which meant making a note to myself to go back and update those poems in the master Google Docs later. (Did I? Not yet. Because: sickness, holiday, life. But I will.)

Today, as I said, WR wanted to take over again, now that she’s functioning at 85% of her powers. But it’s the first day of the year (Happy New Year, duckies), and she and I need to talk.

Oh wait, we just received our first rejection of 2026. On a holiday. Lovely. 

This will be the year I finish a tight draft of novel #3.

But WR, as we all know, lives to write and submit poetry. She tolerated the novel at the writing retreat, barely. Has she even let me open that file since we got home?

Nay, nay.

I don’t know what sort of writing compromise we’ll arrive at for 2026, but we must.

I watched Nonnas today. Netflix, a couch, a body that’s been under the weather, the kind of day that still feels padded around the edges. It was, well, I don’t say heartwarming lightly, but it was.

Word Raccoon was there too, wrapped in her hooded robe that feels like being inside a stuffed animal though she would never stoop to wearing anything actually animal themed, suspicious at first. 

She hasn’t been hungry in days. Not really. Not for food, not for much of anything. Though she did get into the leftover Christmas cookies today and did not even bother to hide the crumbs on my writing table.

But somewhere between the kitchens and the arguing and the shrugs of Nonnas in the film who have lived long enough to know better than to dramatize everything, something shifted onscreen in the restaurant where they fed everyone like family. 

Food appeared. Real food: the Holy Trinity in a Dutch oven, stirred with oil and love. Charred garlic (didn’t know that was a thing) with rosemary and steak in a grill pan. Lasagna. Basil so green I could almost smell it. Limoncello-in-shot-glasses served in a beauty parlor. The kind of food that says, this is what we do, this is how we love.

And Word Raccoon was transfixed. Especially seeing the Dutch oven. 

It wasn’t just hunger for what was on the screen, though that was part of it. It was hunger for translation she felt. For taking what had been seen and felt and turning it into something else. Words, yes. Poems. Little architectures made out of attention.

After the movie, I napped. Then we, that is, I, wrote. 

Five poems, quick and imperfect and alive. They’re circling some of the same questions the film raised for me: family, devotion, solitude, and what we inherit. A couple of them travel to Spain, and we’re not sure how that is related to Italian food but it happened.

Word Raccoon would like it noted that while she is now thinking fondly about limoncello and the fun she had drinking it in a pool in Tuscany once upon a starry evening, she is not, at this time or any other foreseeable time, eager to try the sheep’s head featured in the film.

She asked me yesterday to order the ingredients for a simple chicken noodle soup, and I did, but it’s New Year’s Eve which means appetizers and desserts only. She will just have to wait for its dubious medicinal powers until tomorrow. 

(BTW, Happy New Year’s Eve, loves!)

And no, she is not getting limoncello any time soon, because alcohol is still verboten. On the other hand, the supplements I take to be sure I don’t lose hair with this medicine means I am, gasp, developing a widow’s peak. 

I am grumbling that I do not need more hair. My curls are more than sufficient. However, WR says the more the better. 

Fine, but I’m assigning her hair wrangling duty. 

If only I could get her to rescue the dining room table. It is after-trip, after-Christmas cluttered, and I’m beginning to notice. 

Do watch Nonnas if it sounds like something you might enjoy. It’s based on a true story, and it’s so sweet. Actually, I never say this either, but it was a little short to me. I wanted to see more of the cooking. WR agrees. 

That says it all. 

P.S. WR says I ought to warn you that they alternate saying tomato sauce and tomato “gravy,” and the latter creeps us both out. 

Word Raccoon and I are both under the weather after our writing retreat, tucked under blankets and passing cough drops back and forth like secrets. Still, we’re popping in with some good news worth sharing, even in a cold pill fog.

While we were away, two journals arrived in the mail with my poems inside them:

The Carolina Piedmont Writers Guild, Volume 13, 2026, included my poem Knocking Stars Out of the Known Universe

The Tulane Review (Fall 2025 issue), published by Tulane University, featured my poem Beatitude of the Quietly Scorned, a piece of social commentary

I’m deeply grateful to both of these journals for making room for my work in their pages.

And there’s more. My poetry collection Look, I Built a Cathedral was longlisted for the 2025 C&R Press Awards. It didn’t win, but the editors called it “eminently publishable.” I’ve decided to carry that phrase in my pocket like a talisman.

Here’s the official list, if you’re curious.

Honestly, that kind of note is the literary equivalent of a shot of NyQuil when you’re feeling wilted. (Though for the record, I haven’t taken NyQuil since it made me sick as a child. Disgusting, vile liquid.)

As for WR, she did write a tiny poem today while watching You’ve Got Mail. That movie is her preferred medicine whenever a cold takes over. She wanted to keep writing poems inspired by it. I said no. We are not going to create a chapbook about You’ve Got Mail. (But we could. We absolutely could. And no, I’m not watching it on repeat just because I rented it. I also own a physical copy. But that’s beside the point and involves hooking up tech we do not have the energy for just now.)

For now, it’s back to reading. Unless WR really, really wants to write poetry while the movie continues playing. I wouldn’t be mad about it.

WR would normally have something clever to add here, but if you read her tiny sick-day poem earlier, you know she’s operating at half power. Even so, she did lift her head during the part where the one woman in publishing name-drops Heidegger and Foucault. Don’t tell her, but she doesn’t know enough about either of them to write poems just yet.

That doesn’t mean she won’t learn. I wouldn’t put anything past her.

Anyway, I might try opening the novel before it forgets who I am again. While WR naps.