Those are just words, man

Grout is one of those words, isn’t it? Like kumquat or laissez faire, one that rolls not only off your tongue but out of your mind, where you’re on a surfboard inspired by Bob Marley in an ocean full of motion with not a shark in sight and Mother Mary’s been praying for you since the day you were born.

Go ride that wave, the one swelling and rising like the inflections of certain syllables, like always, like simile, like a child’s smile, like You really mean it this time, don’t you, and Lover, oh Lover, so do I.

- Don Stinson

The heart clutches at the words “lemon-sized tumor,” a tight fist of thick sorrow. When I saw you last summer, with your wig and prosthetic breast, you still wore that Adair County smile and that wonderful laugh as you said you sought a man looking for a bald woman with one boob. I remember your country mother cooking squirrel dumplings on a cast iron stove, and how you loved teaching—no, not teaching, but your students. Nila, may your journey be easy, light as ripples on the Illinois River on a September morning after autumn’s first so-long-awaited rain.

- Don Stinson