How Do We Learn Words?

Today I've been writing about words. Just in a tucked-away place. Out on the back porch, with a cup of Red Velvet tea.

I've been writing about my girls, and all the words we've shared for so long. This makes me happy. It is taking me to worlds where purple moths and fireflies teach me how delicate and beautiful and sometimes amusing life can be.

Because I have been writing in a tucked-away place, I feel a little guilty for how I've been ignoring my blogs. (You noticed, didn't you? :)

Yet sometimes we need to shift spaces, write alone, away. Or we need to read, and read, and read.

I have been reading The Art of the Sonnet. I cannot really write sonnets, but I like reading about poets who can. I have also been reading the new title from T. S. Poetry Press, Delicate Machinery Suspended, by Anne M. Doe Overstreet.

Anne has learned words. Carried words. She speaks of the purple arils of pomegranates, the sensible heels of a grandmother, the daughter "hung from the morning like a pearl pendant." She speaks of the dark that "draws down to cover our tracks, to divide us/from what we have just done."

I learn words from words like that. I carry them and share them with my girls. We kick off our sandals and lean closer to one another.