Aging

Our Fraying Hearts

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

Sunbeams

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

God and the Doctor we alike adore / But only when in danger, not before; / The danger o’er, both are alike requited, / God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.

John Owen

Practicing

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Taking piano lessons, learning to speak Russian, seeking enlightenment

Moon Jellies

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Some nights I dive into the sound / and let the waters have me. / I’ve felt the brush of a jelly arm— / they never really sting. It’s the glimpse / of that phantom-thing gliding beside me.

Butt-Dials

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

“How are you?” Janice asks her brother, because what do you say to someone you didn’t choose to call except the same thing you say to everyone?

The Dead of Dream Town

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

As the majority population of Dream Town, the dead hold all elective offices. They determine the hours of the municipal pool. (Midnight swimming!) They program traffic lights to operate on peculiar patterns: Some never turn red. Others never turn green.

The Eulogy I Didn’t Give (V)

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Are you writing his eulogy in advance? Are you afraid / to sleep at night? Afraid your bones are planning / their escape? And what do you mean by love?

Sunbeams

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I went out to the kitchen to make coffee—yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The lifeblood of tired men.

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Don’t Be Alarmed

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0500

After her third glass of wine, Beatrice got up to look at Bert and Martin’s wedding photo, the one with the understated silver frame and the two of them making out like teenagers, Martin’s leg wrapped around Bert’s thigh. It was supposed to be a joke, but they ended up liking it. She stared at it and thought, This was the man I thought I was spending my life with.

Celebrating

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0500

A fiftieth anniversary in Paris, a COVID Christmas in April, a first birthday in America

Silent Disco

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

“We’re here to have fun,” she says. “Be the full expression of yourselves! You can go anywhere or stay right here—wherever the music moves you.”

The Cat Who Woke Me Up

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

Skill Set

leathtonino@gmail.com — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

. . .What it amounts to is that I feel / beauty all over, almost everywhere, the grass // growing from a mud puddle earlier today, the shadows shifting on distant mountains. . .

Getting Dressed

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Sleeping in uniform, layering against the cold, wearing your spouse’s jeans

On Wheels

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Last summer I took a free one-day course in nearby Philadelphia for adults who wanted to learn to ride a bike. The incident that finally pushed me over the edge was when my eight-year-old niece was riding in circles around me, baffled by my inability to do the same. She asked why I was afraid to do something so easy. And I was afraid: Of falling. Of looking foolish. Of struggling to even get on the seat at a public park and then throwing a tantrum while some teens recorded me on their phones. Mostly I was afraid of finding out how limited I really am.

Manicure

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

What remains of their visit is memory, residue, / trickles of sand from our trip to the beach. / I confess, I like my bedazzled talons . . .

Dear Old Dad

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

What would Young Dad think about Old Dad? Young Dad: professional Alpine ski racer, multi–Emmy Award–winning sports cameraman, and documentary filmmaker—handsome, tan, rugged, jovial. Young Dad, steering the outboard motorboat to Sandpiper Island in Maine, zipping around town in his burgundy Saab, flying around the world for work. Young Dad, skillfully extracting our splinters, icing our bruises, reassuring us about hurricanes and heartbreak.

If Young Dad met Old Dad—hunched, plodding along the beach in water shoes and a straw sun hat, arguing in favor of gluing a live snail onto an art project—Young Dad would have been nice to the old guy. He would have gone out of his way for a chat. But if he discovered the old guy was him, I know exactly what he would have said: You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Look at Me Longer

scotto.writing@gmail.com — Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I turned a corner and saw a tall, handsome man staring right at me. He wore a green sweatshirt, black basketball shorts, and white Nikes. His face was expressive, wise, large-featured. Five-o’clock shadow. A shock of salt-and-pepper hair.

He was me. I was looking into a mirror.

I usually thought of myself as a slob: Dry, blotchy skin. Big belly. Thinning hair. But my reflection was actually pretty nice-looking. I only became a “slob” when I realized who I was looking at, when I understood the mess behind the face.

This Is Hard To Write

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I’m learning that crying is what it is, not bad, not good. And that dementia is what it is, not bad, not good. And anything can happen in anyone’s life, anywhere, anytime. Not bad, not good.

Without the Gate

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

Usually he has a morning episode, then he’s placid most of the day, chatty, gently losing his mind in starts and stops. But after dinner the maximum horror falls on him. He stiffens, his face wracked. He’s at the threshold; he can almost remember the “thing.”

Time in the Shape of Hills

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

My bones wake me up at night. It was my hips at first, then my femurs screaming. Now my ankles. But my doctor won’t listen. It started last year when my son and I walked the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route that runs through Spain. I’m sure that’s why my bones hurt—from all the walking.

Sunbeams

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:00:00 -0400

The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and your last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor, and with joy and with fear as well. But always, though, with blessing.

Martha Graham

A Thousand Words

jolene@jolenehanson.com — Thu, 30 May 2024 01:00:00 -0400

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

The Wisdom Package

haydensaunier@gmail.com — Thu, 30 May 2024 00:03:00 -0400

I ask the youngish eye doctor why my eyes itch / and burn and why new floaty bits / of paramecium-shaped debris swim // through my view each day

Sunbeams

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

There are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers, those who currently are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.

Rosalynn Carter, quoting a caregiver colleague

Charity

sybil.smith7@gmail.com — Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Life is funny. For some it’s quickly snuffed out. For others it burns on and on, like a fire fed by kerosene. Stella can’t seem to die. Though she’s eighty-four and can’t walk, and her weight is almost the same as her age, still her heart beats on and her blood courses through her body, the cells scrubbing and knitting like faithful housewives.

Home Sick

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Once we start to recognize that most of us will, at some point, have to step out of our professional role to provide care, then we have to transform how we’re running our economies. At the moment, our economies are relying on these hidden tragedies that befall women behind closed doors. All to keep the wheels of industry turning.

Pink Suede Boots

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:10:00 -0400

Decades old now, / but the leather’s held up, and the curve / of the instep is still elegant. / I gave them away to my goddaughter, sixteen / and blossoming.

Abandon All Expectations

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 05:00:00 -0500

The fish is now thrashing at the surface. Unlike every other captain I have seen, Cuervo uses a net, not a gaff, to bring it aboard. He has enough experience to know that, by the time a full-grown yellowtail is brought to the boat, it has essentially fought itself to death. Rich lets the captain take over, and Cuervo handles the marvelous creature with a tenderness that has been missing from most of my charter-fishing experiences.

A Letter From Sy’s Desk

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:00:00 -0500

In January my implausible idea of working at the magazine for fifty years will have come to pass, and I will comfortably step into a new role as editor emeritus. That having been said, it’s hard for me to say goodbye.