In the wake of a series of losses, fantasies begin to overlap reality. Folksy, down-to-earth poems set in the modern day intersect with imaginative, absurdist images from the afterlife, as Aparting explores what it means to walk the avenues in between, and to go on living with a phantom heart.

Whether it’s the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, or the extinguishing of a spark of inspiration or passion, the characters in Aparting find themselves in the trenches of grief, trying to learn how to go on existing as a remaining part of a once-complete whole.

Aparting is a narrative poetry collection about living with loss, and dealing with topics ranging from cancer to politics to space exploration. The characters in Aparting face different struggles as they become separated from people or things dear to them, whether it’s by a could shoulder across the room, or a lost signal across the vacuum of space, or a soul slipped across the veil between this world and the next.

Aparting comes out December 8th, 2023, but you can read or download it here or from Smashwords right now.

Smashwords | Amazon (eBook) | Amazon (paperback) – Coming December 8, 2023

Contents:

The House You’re Building
Life After Money
Concurrents
Only Ever
From Time to Time
Passing the Scene of an Emergency
The Lonely Tavern Keeper
I See You Glow
Counting Sleeps
Big and Strong
My Battery is Low and it’s Getting Dark
Into the Dirt
When We Meet Again
The View Through an Afterlife Window
Sunrise
Three Goodbyes
Beats Per Minute
Gardens and Guitars
Something That Stays
Make Like a Tree
In Loving Memory
Aparting

I wanted this one to be free of charge wherever possible. Amazon does not let authors do that. There’s a chance that enough people using Amazon’s “Report Incorrect Product Information” link on the book page and clicking “I have a problem with the price/ I found a lower price elsewhere” will get Amazon to price match it, but this doesn’t always work. In the meantime, you can download a hopefully Kindle-friendly .mobi file here. I also wanted the book to be available at other retailers by the time I made this post, but it seems the holiday rush has hit, and there is a backlog of books waiting to hit storefronts (on the bright side, maybe that means a lot of people are out there writing books?). So you can read and download the book in PDF format right here on my site.

I hope you enjoy this book. This one took a lot. Much love to everyone out there.

Here’s the second poem from the collection, “Life After Money.”

Life After Money

So now we’re living in the future
It doesn’t look quite like we imagined it would
Too much has changed,
But some things haven’t changed enough
And you’re not here
And did you know?

I remember standing barefoot in the snow
My memories are scraped like faded lines on VHS tapes
We wanted to see who could last the longest,
Then we’d run inside and put our feet by the heater vents

Now it’s the end of December,
And outside it’s seventy degrees.

So I’ve been spending too much time in the past,
Grasping at things I lost I swore to God would always last
And in my heart it’s always summer
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t snow
And you’ll always be there,
But that doesn’t make it easy.

We memorized lines to remind us we’re free,
Now I see they taught us how to lean on the bars of the cage
And everything I ever thought that flag was waving for,
And all my visions of our life after money died when you did

I used to dream of December
We’d spend a few weeks in the Caribbean
Just because it seemed like that’s what a family would do
If they could be totally carefree

And I wanted to drink with you by the ocean
But our ocean is made of plastic and oil
And I wanted to sit with you in the grass of an alien world,
But they’ll be bought by the wealthy and portioned out wholesale
And you’re not here
And do you know?

I’m so afraid of the future
Every December we’ll remember what it was like
To light a fire in the fireplace
The way you did when I was a kid and Christmas seemed alive

Why would I want to live in the future?
I couldn’t afford air worth breathing
I’m looking back at the past and it’s all smiles and waves
But the past can’t see that I’m screaming,
And you’re not here.