We’re both writers.

Her volume of writing,
mostly poetry
has demonstrated that she
Is most certainly a poet,
after more than a decade of practice
discovering, recognizing, crafting,
and honoring
her own voice.

She is focused, observant,
precise,
and brilliant in a way
she doesn’t really know,
and her poetry
stops me
completely
when I hear
or read it

She writes a lot upstairs,
here in our home,
in her studio,
a room of unfinished wood floors
and ample sunshine
I like to call
The Barn

And I love knowing
she is up there,
being a poet,
or whatever she chooses to be
any day.


We’re both writers.

My volume of writing is
mostly journaled streams of thought,
and impulsively penned ideas from conversations.
It leads to lots of words, some of which become,
eventually, songs, fiction, and poetry.
And I’ve spread them across pocket notebooks,
journals, word processors, and phone apps,
in a non-system that works somehow for me.

I’m not as focused or organized as she
I tend to be more like a creative breeze
in search of a box
than a constant, practicing writer.
But I've grown faithful, lately
to something like a practice,
thanks to our writing community,
and the years of sharing my life
with another writer, my love, the poet.

I write downstairs, usually.
Sometimes on the porch or deck
or in the big windowed sitting room,
and other times in the messier
but musical, book-filled
room simply called
Randy’s space.

And she loves knowing I am writing,
or reading, or singing, or playing guitar,
here in our home, in our sweet little life,
in whatever room I happen to choose
that day.


We’re both writers.

For the last six days,
I’ve been writing,
early every morning,
in this spiral book,
writing what the doctor told us, and
catching words we’ve told each other,
words with which we’ve held each other
in these difficult moments and hours,
so they will not be forgotten
or washed out in the next day's flood.

And she’s been writing
on her screen,
often in the middle of the night,
to shed and
to capture
the words that won’t
let her sleep,
or eat, for that matter,
for the last six days.