Sy Safransky

May 2001

I’m here in the early-morning darkness, a congregation of one. I’m here, just one more man who thinks he deserves God’s ear, as if God had time for everyone who reached out. I’m here, reaching.

April 2001

When we see ourselves as we truly are, we call it “enlightenment”; we call it “salvation.” The words don’t matter. What matters is that the broken heart is lifted; the light returns.

March 2001

How I yearn to be a better man, though I know that’s just a different kind of greed.

February 2001

I don’t believe that clothes make the man. Then why am I still a little proud that I own only one suit?

She’ll Wrap Her Arms Around Us

The house wasn’t yellow when we moved in, but it needed a fresh coat of paint. I regretted the choice almost immediately. All that yellow made the ramshackle building too bright, too cheerful, too . . . yellow. It hardly looked like the home of a serious little magazine. But, for thirteen years, that’s what it was.

December 2000

We fell asleep the usual way, Norma curled against me, the cats between us at the foot of the bed. At three in the morning, she woke up, violently sick from something she’d eaten, and spent the next two hours throwing up. I knelt beside her in the bathroom, my arm around her shoulder. There are many positions for love.

Holiday Offer

November 2000

In the moonlight, I study the face of the woman I’ve loved for eighteen years. I’m thankful the moonlight traveled such a vast distance tonight, just so I could see her sleeping.

October 2000

One bite at a time, I was being nourished by something mysterious. I was eating rain. I was eating sunlight. I was eating a piece of bread and actually tasting it.

September 2000

The English language sighs. The politicians can’t keep their hands off her. They buy her clothes. They buy her jewelry. They can’t stop making promises. How weary she is, and the campaign has only just begun.