i avoid personal stories

and i don’t know why beyond fear.  and conditioning.  but every once in a while my stories show up inside my fiction and it’s always a surprise.  it happens when i’m in flow.  yesterday i wrote about changing my mom’s dressings for the first time, hands shaking.  oh, i placed the scene inside a story and the main character is a middle-aged man named Phil but it’s really me.

small birds with red breasts peeled the pine cones in my yard, searching for seeds.  shameless little birds that didn’t move when i walked onto the lawn and stood in their midst.

how do you deal with your peeled heart?