Though the dream snake hung limply from the tips of her fingers, its skin glowed with the vibrance of something alive. Even though we both knew it was dead. Its back was smooth turquoise, a hue spotted only in the thinnest band of the rainbow if you squint for it. The belly was a…
Looking up, their pillowed bellies balanced expertly on twigs against an endless backdrop of twinkling constellations. Roo tugged at her leash, her attention closer to Earth level than mine, as she sniffed and pulled me forward. But I kept looking up. After all these years in Nicaragua, I’d never seen Urracas sleeping. …
Blue diamonds shimmered from the ocean’s surface, so bright was the early morning sun. The warming sand soon became warming rock beneath our flip-flopped feet. Traipsing along the shallow tide pools pocketed below the cliffside, many a crab did scramble – sideways, hurried and nervous. I was nervous, too. My two companions…
I pulled up the drive to my friend’s beachfront house in my truck and killed the engine. As I opened the door and stepped out, Roo, with unrestrained excitement, leaped from the back seat and into the driver’s seat. She wriggled through my arms to help her down out of the truck, landing boisterously…
In the mornings I wake up slowly because I want to play back my dreams one more time. My dreams are colorful every single night, pulsating with so much meaning, that I am eager to understand them. I try to register each detail and commit them to memory, to glean whatever message is…
What started as a chill-and-grill birthday pool party at someone else’s house, ended as an impromptu girls’ wine night at mine. This isn’t unusual. I try to always keep wine and coffee stocked in the kitchen, pillows and candles ready for comfort and ambiance, fairy lights twinkling and strung out the back, with…
3 weeks ago “We have no more hope”, she said. I hovered in the back galley, the metal drawers and cabinets slamming slightly, but not alarmingly, in the turbulence 35,000 feet above the Earth. The seatbelt sign was unlit, and after 4 or 5 hours into a 12-hour flight, I was…
The wishing tree lay fallen on her side. Once stretching to the heavens, emerald leaves hiding monkeys from view, she now sprawled across the jungle floor. Branches grown twisted for the safekeeping of birdnests now down-spiraled into dirt. Every uplifted bough had smashed through the younger, smaller trees, splitting them in pieces as feathers…
Rainy season has descended on Nicaragua. The heat lightning warned us of its coming, dancing arrogantly along the purple horizon. I’m coming for you, it flashed. And it came. At the stroke of midnight, the thick, humid air was shattered by a downpour that woke dreamers from their peace. I was…
This week, the moon has loomed high and white, fully illuminating the jungle, the homes, and the ocean blanketing out beneath her. There’s a calmness in the evenings here that is absent during the frenzied heat of the Nicaraguan day. It may not have been a peaceful month for me or many others…