top of page
ILLUMINATING THE BEAUTY OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
MEMOIR &
CREATIVE NONFICTION
"In memoir, we write our way back to ourselves.
And, if we can write deeply and truly enough,
others will find themselves there in our words."
- STACY CLARK
FEATURED WORKS
Falling into Grace
PUBLISHED BY BELLA GRACE, ISSUE 42, 2024
"Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again." - Anais Nin
Up in my home office, I sat at my desk beside the unnoticed pond, downing coffee, hopped up on cold medicine, working with a fever, on a deadline. Pushing through, one more time. Only this time, I saw myself. What am I doing? This cannot be the way to live a life.
Filling the Shoes
PUBLISHED BY P.S I LOVE YOU | A MEDIUM CURATED SELECTION, MAY 2021
How Cold Feet Led to Unanswerable Love
There is a box on the high closet shelf marked Stacy’s wedding shoes.
Inside the shoebox is a pair of pointy-toed, slender-heeled pumps covered in tattered lace and miniature pearls.
My feet do not fit in the shoes anymore. Though I can jam a foot in, almost, like a Cinderella stepsister trying to fit the glass slipper for the prince.
They say an adult foot grows with life, with pregnancy, running and age.
Dawn Chorus
FINALIST, CURT JOHNSON PROSE AWARDS, DECEMBER 2016
The Beauty and Discord in Whatever Myths We Tell
Sunday afternoon, she sits small and straight on the piano bench, at a concert grand stretching nearly nine feet across the stage. Outside, the Florida sun shines hard. Inside the 113-seat hall, the lights are dimmed for the next performer, the girl in the flowered dress with hands on her lap. A woman’s perfume wafts, bodies rustle in the quiet whispers of the audience. The girl with the dark curls, made against nature by her mother’s pale hands, shifts, lifts her fingers to the keys. The lights rise, and sound breaks into the silence.
After We Are Broken
Off the Perfect Path, A Mother Finds the Beautiful
An afternoon and sunlight slants through the bedroom blinds. She pretends to fall off the bed. She is small, not quite three. Straight dark hair, high full cheeks, pursed mouth, golden giggles. I catch her as she falls. "I gotcha, Hanna," I say. Now it is my turn. I feign falling. She reaches out her chubby toddler hands, grasps. "Got you, Momma." All smiles. We do this back and forth, again and again. I save her. She saves me. Isn't this what adoption is? Catching each other so we will not break. I used to think so. I used to believe in wholeness and perfection and getting home before the dark.
Sitting with a Soldier
An Airport Encounter Leads to a Moment of Understanding About What We All Need
Between flights, I sat in the Denver airport near my gate. The sounds of travel echoed through the concourse. Booming voices, squeaking strollers, garbled announcements, and the beep-beep of carts conveying travelers through the crowds blurred into white noise as I waited in my own cushioned-chair world.
GET IN TOUCH
bottom of page