108/365 - David

David held our building together before it all went to shits, rust water spilling over us; David with his glittery things, objects d' manufactured art set just so, snow leopard robe, manicured shrubs. When he hit the road for Palm Springs, fluff doggy in lap, bad people moved in and the walls began to crumble.

107/365 - Audrey

She lives from her hips, the spaces she inhabits fill from there--gumption, zest, and a way of being that soothes like a petal bath. Half lush island, half dense city, she circles them both, coaxing onlookers into flight.

106/365 - Reiko

Reiko aimed with precision, half urban cowgirl, half Zen archer, each move preconcieved without regret. Her fuel burned with the notion of being one woman among many men, one wax lily among sharp branches with thorns.

105/365 - Charles

Charles--gray shirt and slacks and ashen hair--sat, for three days, three-thousand miles, back like a board, memorizing the landscape ahead. Forty years my senior, he wrote me shaky letters, enclosing trinkets like bracelets and keychains.

104/365 - María II

This little willow tree of a woman with the voice of a thousand-year-old witch knows magic. It rests behind her smiling teeth. When she sings, an ancient spring bubbles forth like a mother's aching. Wherever she goes, every living thing stirs.

103/365 - María

She is busy-ness, nostalgia, fire under water, psicología. María, la que toca, la que sabe--she who plays, she who knows. María, the muse. María whose sentences begin with words, end in gestures.

102/365 - Tomáš

You punched out the boy who wrote me love letters on toilet paper, your gift for me a bag of green candy on moving day. And there you were a summer later at the sea a thousand miles away, facing me, a stranger.

101/365 - Jana

From my hands to hers daily I passed my boy--an exercise in trust. She was wispy like a feather, devoted like a nun. And with each time the door closed, more freedom escaped my way.

100/365 - paní Kuncová

Above the jasmine, apple trees and hazelnuts, the dreaded window. Play, build, jump, hide, throw, do not look up! The widow is all venom, wrinkles and dark lips behind the windowpane that eats light.

99/365 - Lisa

Sorrow is your fertile ground. You feel it under your feet—soft dark mud the smell of pre-birth. It fills you, a winged bird shackled to the earth, like the tide that always returns. You built your house from it: sorrow rich enough to feed the world.

98/365 - Klára

You were the softest of the three, the middle daughter with the sensual lips, breath the weight of a hesitation. I wanted to unlock you, see the forbidden upstairs, your room through the curtains.

97/365 - Steve C.

Collector extraordinaire. A man from another place, another time trapped in the here and now. Dark, narrow shelves lining the walls--a thousand miniature stories, each a world. Who do you share all that you know with?

96/365 - R

He finds me many years and miles down the road. Those eyes that seared are now faraway, but his words stir me. They are a key. I look. No guard dog here. I am free.

95/365 - babička Fuchsová

A switch flipped in me from naughty to nice when suffering took on the shape of a well, her daughter dying. At five I'd resolved to soften all impact on her wrinkled velvety skin, toothless chewing, thin grey bun, selfless heart.