Rand Hess. She was the

Rand Hess. She was the literacy coach and design specialist for Book-in-a-day and worked as regional coordinator in Northern and Western Maryland for Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest. She is a Jin Shin Jyutsu (a Japanese healing art) practitioner in Baltimore, MD, and is currently working on a children's novel-inverse. www.deannanikaido.com Deanna Nikaido Deanna Nikaido is a graduate from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, with a degree in Illustration and has authored two collection of poetry, Voice Like Water and Vibrating with Silence and the children’s book, Animal Ark, coauthored with Kwame Alexander and Mary

May It Be Before I knew skin was separation or had any sense that the body was boundary, I was everything you are. Everything sky is. Or ocean does. The way a flock of birds migrate as a single wing. Or a school of fish fit to water. The way my grandson sees the world without words barefoot and antenna. Picasso tried to peel away the strokes with his first set of eyes. Lessen the weight of all his looking. Shed what isn’t there— What would it take to remember that we are all strung like stars in constellation? Inseparable from. The center of. Completement for each other. Whatever ingredients you hold, may they be kind may they add to the wholeness of shining itself. Deanna Nikaido