It’s time to write sad lines, like the one about a midnight sky punctured by stars dying a millennia ago but whose absence touches me tomorrow. I look for them in daylight, but they are lost, and I stop, no longer the same. I will remember it/her/them/you forever but that’s wrong. The structures complicate me, the shape of emptiness, the finitude of loss. Silence being still and certainty tenuous, at twilight, luminous insects light my path.
2020
This way my heart broke
as tides beat the shore
or purple mountains erode
by pebble and stone worn
2022
I bury you, cloaking grief in gestures that conceal the soft things about me
some are mine, others yours like the freckles on my forearm that look like constellations–a speckled Galaxy stretching like cellphone across my skin
bursting stars into silver dust against a pixilated, indigo night–
2022
I use to be brave–
in the beginning when I
was softest, not too shy to say
how I feel, before words left
me without balance, before
this mosaic of wounds
before exhaling broken
moments. Regret
sinks like weights in winter
a gravity of grief. Low tide
recedes, abandoning starfish
arms splayed. Shadows
slip away with ghosts
beneath low-hung clouds
stealing wishes I
stutter to say
to myself or you
or anyone
aloud.
2023
I’ve been working on a new photo project: Metabolism. It’s a series of 10 black and white photographs taken between 2019-2022 in the Pacific Northwest: Seattle to Bay Center on the Washington coast. The project is in conjunction with ArtHeals™ Art Exhibition Program curated by Judith Rayl. Supporting this private exhibition will be signed and unsigned photo books of the series and several artists talks given in the greater Seattle area between October 2025 and April 2026. Say tuned about how to purchase the limited run photo books and ways to possibly stream the talks. Thanks everyone for your support and interest! ~SHR
