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Luggage

You are required to keep the poundage low: 
two large cases and a carry-on: 
what you take for months overseas. 
In a year of famine, you have volunteered 

Pruned

I have always been a flowering vine, 
Seeking new trellises to trail on, 
Climbing ladders to the sky, 
Lusting over neighbor fences 

Mothers and Daughters: Parting

No husband summoned me to Koshi. BYU, Washington, D.C., and a mission president in Tokyo summoned me long before a husband. And even when it was a husband, he summoned me no farther than California. But I too was my mother’s prize, her only daughter. And I suspect each time I left, my mother’s feelings were no different than Lady Otomo’s. For Mother ex pressed her longing and loneliness not in a poem or a letter, but in carefully selected personal stories shared over a sink of peach pits, skins, and sterile quart jars. 

A Journey with Doubt

An unwavering testimony of the unique and utter truthfulness of the Church is a prized possession among Mormons. I often hear members declare in testimony meetings that they have “always known the Church is true.”…

What You Leave Behind: Six Years at the MTC

Even now, nearly eleven years later, I can still see his face—shocked, fearful, and deeply pained. I’d been working for almost four months at the newly constructed, multi-million dollar Language Training Mission, as the Missionary…

To Watch a Daughter Die

To watch a daughter die — 
One could practice a lifetime 
And never do it well. 
The labored hell