The End, Twice Over

The sky is still blue, but it feels gray.

The trees stand, the wind moves,

but everything is off-kilter, trembling

at the edges of something breaking.

They said it would be bad after the election and we knew it,

but I didn’t think it would feel like this—

a slow unraveling, the kind of silence

that follows sirens,

the pause before the real damage sets in.

And then, there’s you.

Or rather, the space where you aren’t now—-

the echo of your name in rooms you’ll never enter again. 

But you could. Oh please don’t be gone. This is too much. 

I watch the world fall apart on the news,

but I keep checking my phone for a message from you. A meme. An instagram reel. 

You checking in to make sure I’m ok because this month I feel the furthest thing from that. 

Yeah, maybe you’ll be there for me like you always have been. 

Because everyday I feel like the world is going to end 

but how did our friendship go to that place instead? 

My grief and this global grief

weigh heavy in my chest. 

But one missing voice, yours,

Is a void, the cut of a knife deeper than a nation in flames. 

The world is ending,

twice over.

Daffodils and Greenways…

I once heard that daffodils signify a place where someone once lived. 

I feel like there will be daffodils growing by or in my heart forever missing the place I held there for my friend. 

I once read a Persian poem that read جای تو سبز است —which means a person’s place is green in the place they should still be. 

I never thought or believed there would be a place that was green in my soul for any friend until their or my death. 

But instead a worse death—this. I can’t stop crying. 

This is worse than a death. 

So much worse. 

An end?

It can be reversed. 

Fixed. 

Mended. 

Fill in the blank with the verb, but not the verb, oh not this one: end. 

This place is green—empty, there is a dark shadow cast over it, 

I supposed a sage poet might write. 

And I can’t shake this sadness. 

I’ll never understand this. 

This hurts way way too much. 

I don’t want this pain. 

I don’t want it to be this way. 

This grief is too heavy. 

And I feel so alone my mind trying to make sense and keep my head above water. 

Take this away. 

Don’t do this, okay? 

The daffodils and greenways are gorgeous, 

but shouldn’t be grieved, mourned. 

They only should be enjoyed through the years with you my friend. 

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH/The Ghost Does Not Ache

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH/The Ghost Does Not Ache 

- When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are...

I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free. One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away. - The House on Mango Street  

Last week I read these words out loud to my students knowing I was moving out of teaching English after 22 years. My voice shook and tears filled my eyes. 

Metaphorically? 

Teaching English is my Mango Street. My career is Mango Street. It has been a bittersweet ride that even you all don’t know half of the half of what I have endured. And now the beginning of the end is here.

Today I said goodbye to teaching English in the regular classroom for life, and 365 days from now I’ll be at the finish line if I so choose. And right now I want out a year from today. Why? 

I am very very tired.

And the hurt. 

The wounds I was healing from were re-ripped open again in ways no one should ever have to go through. But I did. Oh, how I did. 

Year 22 is over, and thankfully so. It has been the most exhausting and difficult year of my personal and professional life. Most days this semester I was barely keeping myself alive. I had people I hadn’t heard from in years checking in on me daily without me asking. I maintain my dogs and my mom kept me alive. And so did the depression I went through in my mid 30s that taught me some coping skills. 

Because what people put me through so far in 2025 and didn’t have to? 

They DID NOT HAVE TO.

I didn’t want to be alive because of THEM.  

At all. 

But then a small whirlwind of a week, several literal miracles came along—as if one of you out there demanded and screamed into the void for me: 

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. 

And in those moments I saw a smile returning and felt like maybe, just maybe, I could breathe again.  

The tears lessened but then didn’t, the depression subsided some, even though the knife kept cutting deeper and deeper, I saw a light that didn’t look like hope, but it looked like something with less pain. It was the ONLY path in the woods, not the road not taken. 

So with an incredible leap of faith that even I could not have dreamed up or imagined, and thanks to many angels including my college basketball coach and former boss Stephanie Heman, I will be finishing my Missouri teaching career as a full time science teacher and part time college English teacher—which I have been doing already for 14 years. 

Bonus? I’ll be bringing my National Geographic fellowship alive with a service project TBA in this new position. I can’t wait to see where this new path leads for my new students and community.

Friends—There is still an ache. There are nightmares who will haunt me till the day I die from this year. There is a sadness that will take months, maybe years to leave. 

But when I write, share with you or for no one, the ghost, the ache subsides. 

And when I remember my Mango Street, which walking away from is still very raw…

‘I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.’

Today is that day. 

And my heart is full.

The midwestern winds

Your absence lingers in the bustling, hollow air,

a song the wind carries but never completes.

The walls don’t whisper your name—

they only echo the quiet.

I hear the wind rolling, steady and slow,

dragging the weight of days behind it,

pressing against the windows,

but never stepping inside.

Laughter once lived here,

light as dust in a sunbeam,

but now even the dust settles,

undisturbed, untouched.

The night sighs like it, too,

remembers what it lost.

And in the hush between the trees,

I listen, I wait—

but only the wind and my nightmares speak back.

Yet something stirs beyond the stillness,

a breath, a shift, a quiet return.

The wind whispers—not of endings,

Oh please, midwestern winds, blow in like Mary Poppins—send a miracle. And reverse this ending.