Contributor: Susie Sweetland Garay


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We all expand and retract
with the seasons

and today
on this first day of summer
I am expanding.

We shed skin like snakes and become tender,
until time passes and it builds up again,

but I want to stay tender.

The answer
to most any question
is practice,

and here too I think
it is the answer.

I am defined by motherhood

but am unsure what the consequences will be.
Perhaps too much softness.

We named our cat
after the most flawed
character in a favorite show

and now every time we say
his name in love or anger
we are reminded of
his namesake
and where his
softness took him.


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Born and raised in Portland Oregon, Susan Sweetland Garay currently lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter where she works in the vineyard industry. Her first full length poetry collection, Approximate Tuesday, was published in 2013 and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014. Her second collection, Strange Beauty from Aldrich Press, was published in 2015.