this is a promise

darling, one day
you will have your own set of keys
dangling off that keychain
you got in Scotland
back when living alone
was a pit in the stomach
a dead weight joke
too tender to dream of
you will set your own table
with flowers you bought
in bursting armloads
from your favorite store
you will open the door
and lead a tour
and say, no worries,
we have extra towels,
stay the night
you will be the anchor
and not always
the sloshing sea
you will find rooms
that make you light up
so that parties are not always
candle snuffers but rather
the lit wick
you will stand sure 
in your own skin
knowing better how it will fail you
but also how it can heal
you will buy cleaning supplies
and salvage couches and arrange
your growing library and fry rice
on a cast iron pan
you will tell your friends,
this is my kind of movie,
and they will laugh and say,
we know
darling, it 
gets better

Happy New Year! Or as Kimberly Phinney put it, in a post I can’t stop thinking about, Holy Old Year!

It felt fitting to start the year off with this poem, a kind of summary of the holiness last year held for me. I read it aloud to a group of friends for an open mic night in our apartment in the flush of May, sitting on a stool I bought sophomore year of college and which I have carted with me through several apartments. My friends sat before me, faces uplifted like sunflowers, smiling, rejoicing in my joy.

I wrote this one for the me of 2017 and 2018, some of my hardest years. Due to health issues, I wasn’t sure then if I’d ever be able to live on my own. College was a dream falling like ash through my splayed hands. I feel like all my poems come back to this, the me then versus the me now, how I’m still shaking my head in wonder at the twists and turns of the past ten years. “God will restore the years the locusts have eaten,” my dad told me then. I still falter at saying such things because the rejoinder in my head is always what about the people for which he doesn’t? But then the counterargument is always I don’t know but all I can say with confidence is my story.

Now there are other dreams that sit in the pit of my stomach, desires too tender to name. I’m back again wailing at God at why he seems to be withholding good from me.

It amazes me—it probably shouldn’t—that despite the goodness of God that I have seen in the land of the living, I still fear that it will be taken away. It makes me think of what renowned Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote in his memoir, In This World of Wonders, about how his faith shifted after the death of his son:

Faith involves cognition of some sort, be it belief or something else; but faith, at its core, is not belief but trust. After Eric's death, my trust in God became more wary, more cautious, more guarded, more qualified. I pray that God will protect the members of my family. But I had prayed that for Eric. I still trust God; but I no longer trust God to protect me and my family from harm and grief.

I haven’t, thank God, experienced a loss like that but I have had the carpet pulled out from under my feet. I know now, and always will, that it is possible to lose what feels like your whole world. It’s a scar that no longer bleeds but still aches with every stretching movement. I know it is possible to not be spared.

I also know it is possible to be resurrected.

In the words of Drew Miller, I know there will be surprises.

The rest of my life and my writing will probably be an attempt to hold together those two truths. This poem is one such an attempt. Mostly it is, as the title says, a promise: hold on, younger me, amidst all that hasn’t gone how you expected. It gets better. And who knows? There is likely an older Aberdeen writing a poem to the me of now saying just the same thing: hold on, darling, amidst all your unfulfilled hopes. It gets better.

---

In Other Words…

Goodreads

First two book reviews of the year are here! One was an unexpected disappointment, one was an unexpected treat.

• Wind and Truth | Brandon Sanderson (3 stars)

• Shoe Dog | Phil Knight (4 stars)

Letterboxd

I’m delighted by how many movies I’ve watched in the past several weeks. Lots of Christmas movies, which definitely put me in a festive mood, and then several solid entries for 2025, listed here:

• La Haine (4.5 stars)

• This Beautiful Fantastic (4 stars)

• Juror #2 (3 stars)

• We Live in Time (3 stars)

• The Six Triple Eight (2.5 stars)

Let me know if you’ve seen any of these and what your thoughts are! I’m starting to research likely Oscars nominees and adding them to my list—last year I’d seen most of the nominees and it made the Oscars an infinitely more fun experience.

I’m glad you’re here as we enter this year. Keep staying awake!

Aberdeen