Safer Spaces

Living a full life is about exploring not only the wonders of the world, but discovering the wonders that the world can bring out of you. This collection of poetry examines the different ways that we can find those, through exploration, imagination, and learning the magic that is hidden in ourselves and the people around us. There are miraculous secrets in anybody, and you can find them -- if you build a space between you where you both feel safe enough to become miraculous together. I moved around a lot of the United States over the past year or two, when we were trying desperately as a country to rip ourselves apart. (Hopefully, we didn't succeed yet.) The overwhelming sentiment was "Don't they get it " -- in bars in Puerto Rico, bingo halls in Arkansas, beaches in California, office parks in Maryland, waffle diners in Georgia. How are -those people- in other places so incapable of seeing what the real truth is? Maybe that's the way it always is, or maybe it's worse now than it ever has been -- but between coasts and heartland, between the islands and the mainland, between the ivory towers and the welfare line, there's no real connection; there's not even a place for them to look at each other through all the walls. There are going to be plenty of books soon enough about building even more walls, no doubt. This is a book about feeling safe without them.