Browse Topics
Friendship
Old Friend
I wasn’t good at sports, like he was, but when it was just the two of us, he liked to play pretend. That, I was good at. Whether we were knights or ninjas or mountain men or astronauts or soldiers in Vietnam, he listened with his whole self — intent, leaning in — to whatever story I was telling.
November 2021
The Wedding Gift
From the moment Ashlee asked me to be a bridesmaid, / I understood what my wedding gift needed / to be. It wasn’t the set of tumblers / I shipped her from 14th Street, daffodils and dandelions / climbing the sides. It wasn’t helping her angel of a mother / practice her speech, making pencil marks for pauses / and every deep breath. No, my gift / to Ashlee started when she told me Cate from college / would be a bridesmaid, too.
November 2021Jewish Community Center Entrance, July 1971
It’s dark and I don’t feel / at all well and my mother / will soon arrive to take me / home and the overripe aroma / of the hedges with the tiny / white flowers is making me / want to throw up but I’m / not alone because a fellow / counselor-in-training, / my first friend who is a boy, / has left the camp sleepover / to wait with me
October 2021A Few Days After My First Vaccine
Walking by the lake, I lose an earring / and don’t even notice it at first, / overwhelmed as I am / by the strangeness of everything.
September 2021Sisters
The kind you’re born with, the kind you choose, the kind that teach Catholic school
September 2021
The Brahmin’s Son
One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking — a detour, error.
July 2021
What I Lived For
When I was young, I lived for what I thought of as “lyrical moments,” when the details of life were suddenly heightened and approached the transcendent. . . . Of course, if you live long enough, you start thinking more and more not about the lyrical but rather about time. . . . I am living to stay alive.
May 2021
After The Flood
When we went back outside, Tom had stopped sawing and was repotting the bare vine. “You never know,” he said. He’s right, of course. We don’t know what the world will bring, what power lies in a salvaged tomato plant, what we all do to build back, survive, thrive.
March 2021
The Union Waltz
After work we would be headed to Smitty’s Bar, where the twangy music would kick up, and I’d try to find the courage to dance in public.
February 2021
A stolen letter, a posthumous package, a Christmas card from a stranger
February 2021
