Author: courtneybosworth

Casseroles were always her go-to dish,

An economy born of her heart’s favorite wish—

Anything saved us from extra pans,

Yet beauty was served by her gentle hands.

Chili mac, baked spaghetti, or crispy grilled cheese,

Simple comfort she crafted to nourish and please.

She loved to feed family, gathered and sweet,

And one of her favorites was Spanish meat.

A treasure passed down from her mother before,

Like meatloaf unraveled and scattered once more.

It filled up our table, a weekly delight,

A honest, good supper to end every night.

But savory dinners were just half the art—

Cookies and cakes held a place in her heart.

She’d sample each batch as the mixing was done,

Stealing a bite just to test every one.

Growing up raised on the food from her stove

Is a memory wrapped in a blanket of love.

Though I only can master a dish, maybe three,

Her handed-down recipes stay close to me.

With Midwestern heart and a soul full of grace,

She turned simple ingredients into a place—

Where everything coming right out of her aisle

Was the best comfort food by a country mile.

My parents built a sanctuary out of ink and binding,

a house where libraries lived both upstairs and down.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves holding the weight of worlds,

every spare inch crowded with a quiet, infinite landscape.

There were heavy lexicons and columns of history,

leaving no excuse for an unanswered mind.

But beneath the rigorous architecture of the schoolwork,

the true inheritance was waiting in children’s bedrooms.

Towering bookcases standing guard beside our beds,

every shelf stacked tight with a private invitation to escape—

sailing away where the wild things run,

or drifting high upon a giant peach.

The rooms have changed, but the geography remains.

The greatest wealth they ever passed into my hands was the quiet freedom of the page.

Raindrops keep falling on my head—

that was the song I chose

to perform at the school recital.

But I froze.

I was five or six

and all the parents were there,

looking for their child to perform.

But I didn’t care about them.

I was going to be the star of the show.

They were going to see.

Everyone’s eyes

were going to be looking at me.

I practiced every day.

And every night.

I was going to be the star.

But I froze from the fear.

I froze from the fright.

I ran from the stage—

all the eyes looking at me.

I was going to be the star, but it wasn’t to be.

There she sits, a country entirely on her own.

A voice inside whispers: Go ask for her phone.

But the old walls rise up,

heavy and tight—

No, I can’t do it. Just not tonight.

She is too sweet for the scars that I wear,

Too bright for the shadow I bring to the chair.

She must be waiting for someone, I think—

So back to the borders I quietly shrink.

I turn from the table, I step from the floor,

Leaving tomorrow to guard the front door.

But days turn to months, and the months into years,

Until loneliness hardens and swallows the fears.

And the old ceiling questions circle the dark:

How does a stone ever find a bright spark?

For I cannot see through the ghost of my history, Why anyone like her would want someone like me?

“You talk to yourself to hear yourself speak,”

My mother would say, her patience worn thin.

The youngest of three, a ghost in the hall,

Watching the shadows of evening close in.

Solitary hours before dinner was made,

A boy creating a world on the floor.

Now the habit remains like an old wooden latch

Keeping the winter away from the door.

For silence is fertile, a wild, empty space

Where the ghosts of old history are easily made.

I anchor my mind when the perimeters fade,

To keep the long loneliness outside the gate.

Let the world call it strange to converse with the air;

It is only the masonry guarding the deep.

When the room grows too heavy,

I break through the dark—

I talk to myself To hear myself speak.