“You can observe a lot
just by watching,”
said a baseball player
who understood seasons.
Two afternoons ago,
I sat in a lecture hall
watching a man
who still loves what he does.
This, I think, is a form of generosity.
He spoke about observation
as though it were not a skill
but a posture,
something you lean into
rather than master.
Take the dandelion.
We learned its name early.
We learned it could grant wishes
if we breathed hard enough.
We learned the wind would do the rest.
Then we decided
we knew it.
Label applied.
Lesson complete.
Attention withdrawn.
The dandelion continued anyway
with its architecture,
its patience,
its quiet mathematics of return.
It kept unfolding relationships
with bees,
with soil,
with children who forgot its name
but still loved its defiance.
How many things
have we learned only enough
to stop looking?
How many people
do we greet by name
while knowing nothing
of their design?
Later, we were encouraged
to ask our questions
and then to set them down.
To watch.
Intellectual beauty likes to be solved.
Aesthetic beauty prefers to be witnessed.
One explains.
The other arrives.
So perhaps today
we step outside
without extracting meaning.
No schedules.
No proof.
Just a willingness
to stand still
long enough
for something ordinary
to show itself
as extraordinary.
And if we feel something
we cannot name,
let us resist the urge
to name it.
Let us watch.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
Tag: love
Poem: Like Any Woman
It was not what she said
Instead
It was the way she held
The stem of her glass
Between freshly painted
Fingernails
Details
Red wine and red.
She breathed in and out
Like any woman would
Except
The silk in her dress
Gathered and fell
With inhale and
Exhale—
I waited for the next.
Her laugh was too loud
No clever disguise of
Civilized
Formalized veiling her mouth
Instead
Candlelit stares
In the face of she
Whose savage joy mesmerized me.
There was a soulful tune
Permeating the room
Penetrating
Armor I knew
Well beyond its usefulness
But
I had grown accustomed to
Until I felt the thrust of she.
Never before had her eyes
Encountered mine
“Hello,” I said—
Enunciation tranquilized
Words fell all the way back
And slid
To the sharpest point
Of her black high heel.
It was not that I fell mute
Instead
I dared not dilute
Fortuity in the air
With words wrapped
In coherence or
Forced insistence
Of my own understanding.
I held my hand open
For her to take
Perceiving
Gently cleaving
To the feeling
If she lay her hand in mine
Her touch would both stop and
Awaken time.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
Poem: We Walked Through Snow and Ice
People are complicated. They’re rarely what we first believe, and they’re almost always carrying a weight we cannot see. We tend to notice what others are willing or able to show us, and we assign meaning from there.
Strength, in particular, is easy to misread. Sometimes it’s resilience. Sometimes it’s concealment. Often it’s both.
We move through the world interpreting one another through our own mixture of experience, education, memory, and fear. It is remarkable that we connect at all. And yet, we do.
We walked along in the snow and ice
And you wanted to hold my hand.
I thought you wanted to show yourself strong,
But you were losing your footing too,
And needed my steadiness to help you along.
I refused you because I did not need your help,
I did not fear a fall,
And then you fell all on your own.
I wondered
If I could have helped.
We walked along a sandy shore
And you wanted to hold an umbrella up to the sun.
I thought you worried my skin would burn,
But yours was turning red,
You forgot your hat and needed the cover.
I refused you because I did not need your help,
My skin is olive in tone,
And then your skin turned hot.
I wondered
If I should have helped.
We walked along in wind and rain
And you wanted to lead me into shelter.
I thought you wanted to hold me close,
But beads of sweat gathered around your head,
And fever took your strength and made you ill.
I refused you because I did not need your help,
For me, the rain is a thrill,
And then you lay for days in your bed.
I wondered
Why I did not help.
We walked along inside my dreams
And you wanted to plot out the way.
I thought you wanted to boast in your sense of direction,
But the path grew long and the day turned to night,
So we lost one another under the stars.
I refused your course because I did not need your help,
For me, wandering without plan is adventure,
But then I lost you and you were gone.
I wondered
If I should have let you lead.
We walked away, I went this way, you went that,
And you did not turn to watch me go.
I thought you wanted to stay,
But the distance grew wide
And the time grew long.
I refused to feel because I could not feel it all,
My heart was broken in your hands,
But when I felt it all at once
I turned,
And you were gone.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
The Glass Garden
By Jill Szoo Wilson
She wanders through the glass garden,
its delicate beauty responding, finger to mirrored finger’s touch.
Strange, crystalline flowers stretch toward the light,
their petals refracting into soft spectrums
that dance along smooth pathways.
Silence presses in, heavy and expectant,
as if the air itself holds its breath.
At the garden’s center, he waits. He always does.
Shadows cling to him, his form barely tethered to solidity,
a presence stitched together by longing and careful restraint.
A faint smile flickers, never quite full enough to trust,
yet just enough to draw her closer.
“You belong here,” he murmurs,
his voice gliding through the stillness
like wind through hollow reeds in minor tones.
She hesitates.
Once, she believed him.
The garden felt like a sanctuary then,
each shimmering petal a promise,
each whispered word an anchor.
He held her attention gently,
but never her truths.
Now, something has shifted.
A fissure in the glass,
a hairline chime so subtle she almost doubts it.
Light catches differently, harsh, revealing.
What once dazzled now glares too bright, too sharp.
She touches a flower, glass petals cold and rigid.
A faint metallic sigh lifts from the bloom, out of tune with everything lovely.
Smooth. Perfect. Unchanging.
It does not bend or breathe.
It is made to be admired,
not to grow.
A crack splinters outward from her fingertip.
His expression stutters.
His outline wavers,
a reflection fractured,
more silhouette than man.
“Stay,” he says, voice tightening.
“Stay as long as you like.”
But she sees the architecture now,
paths that always loop back to him,
walls that glitter like freedom
while holding her in place.
He offers comfort without courage,
intimacy without vulnerability,
presence without entrance.
He keeps her not with chains,
but with the fear
that beyond these fragile walls
nothing will care for her as he once did.
The glass beneath her feet trembles.
The garden shudders.
Light bursts into chaos,
not radiant but blinding.
Stepping stones split apart.
The sharp sound of rupture
erases memory faster than she can cling to it.
He reaches for her
but his hand halts midair.
He can summon, but not hold.
He exists only within the shimmer,
never in the world where things grow.
“You beckon,” she says,
“yet drift backward from the place you call me to.”
She inhales.
A quiet instinct rises,
not a thought, not a plan,
just the first pulse of something living.
Without another glance,
she moves beyond,
through ruin and release.
Beyond the garden,
the world stretches wild and untamed.
Sifted earth rises to meet her feet,
unsteady but real.
Wind tangles through her hair.
The scent of something alive,
dirt, leaves, wildflowers,
fills her lungs.
Behind her,
a world of tinkling glass
cascades and shatters,
a thousand tiny bells
collapsing at once.
Sharp edges melt into curves.
Memories smolder into ash.
A single birdcall,
bright and unfamiliar,
breaks open the quiet.
She pauses.
Listening.
Unsure.
The wild ahead
waits without promise
and without fear.
Poem: She Spoke Of Love
A moment before, floating in the sun
My love beside me
Warm and glowing
Her eyes ablaze with rays of light
Her darkness concealed in
Illumination.
A moment before, she spoke of love
My friend beside me
Kind and gentle
Her smile warmed but burned
Her face like wax
Melting.
I wanted to see my love through the brightness of stars
The universe brought low and waiting
Swirling about my hands and mind
Becoming one with all that breathes
And pants
And lives
And dies
A moment before, I removed my gloves
My fire beside me
Trembling and stiff
Her fingers felt but did not touch
Her hand in mine only
Embers.
A moment before, she swallowed words
My pain beside me
Inflamed and suffering
Her silence thickened in my throat
Her Nothing choked
Suffocating.
I wanted to see my love through the brightness of stars
The universe brought low and waiting
Wrapping my cold in warmth
Like a child crying
But hopeful
But calming
But safe
A moment before, the snow dropped down
My hope beside me
Present and vacant
Her ruffled dress covered with water
Her boots muddied with
Goodbye.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2015
Sonnet: The Tongue of Peace
What once was whole is splitting at the seam,
With roaring tongues that never find a word.
Each stands alone, entranced by their own dream,
While fear doth arm the gates with aim absurd.
The bridge between us withers into dust,
A chasm wide where voices fade to air.
Yet in our hearts still burns this ancient trust—
The longing for a hand extending ear.
But how to reach when dread hath drawn the line?
When walls are built of pride and weary doubt?
We stand as statues, yearning for a sign,
Yet know not how to call the silence out.
O break the curse—let all division cease,
For love still speaks the only tongue of peace.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
Read more by Jill Szoo Wilson on Substack.
Poem: Slowness
There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down.
Milan Kundera, Slowness
Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.
In existential mathematics that experience takes the form of two basic equations: The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.
Kundera, man. This guy just knows how to pierce into and extend a metaphor.
The question his thoughts inspire in me today is this: when we travel from the present moment to our memories–or an imagined future–does the speed of life around us change? How do we move from our imaginations to our current surroundings? Slowly or with speed?
Slowness
By Jill Szoo Wilson
A breeze blows through my window
proclaims,
"I wants to write,"
as it lifts the pages of my notepad–
the crinkling sound of paper–
no–
the sound of pages running across a sidewalk
though no footsteps follow behind.
Free, the pages tumble
twist into a roll–
double back salto tucked with a triple twist–
a pigeon holds up a sign,
"7 out of 10."
It had to be the pigeon.
No one else was paying attention.
The fluttering of the notebook page
pulls me back into the moment–
how many sounds have I forgotten to hear?
Do I hear the past
more loudly than today?
How many hours echo through a chamber of disparate chatter?
A dog is barking,
a squirrel's claws are tapping the inside of my ceramic pot,
I'm humming a song that was sung to me once,
the pigeon is bored–
he flys away.
©Jill Szoo Wilson, 2023
Necessary Whispers 