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Seaside

When James is high, he is at his most affectionate. He becomes generous with hugs. He kisses my face all over, eyelids and all. I am ashamed that I like this about his addiction.

Out Of The Ordinary

I hand my wife the bag, and she finds the two packs of wet wipes. It is the happiest I’ve made her in weeks.

The Ramshackle Garden Of Affection

Dear Ross: How can you miss on purpose? If I’m late getting back on defense, you’ll bounce the ball off the bottom of the rim and catch the “rebound” for a point. Alone under the basket. Missing.

Dear Noah: Bouncing the ball off the bottom of the rim is, as you say, a poorly missed shot, but also a perfectly missed one, because it results in a point in our game, which means it’s a way for me to stay on the court. If there were a way I could stay on the court without cheating — without those perfectly, beautifully missed shots — believe me, I would do it.

Last Writes

My friend possessed the inclination and the ability to turn her experience of the world into a language that insisted on delighting in itself.

Fear

Of failure, of the high dive, of other people

Here Together

These days I can see us clinging to each other / as we are swept along by the current

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Life Before The Virus

I. / I remember shaking hands: / damp sweaty hands and dry scratchy hands, / bone-crushing handshakes and dead-fish handshakes, / two-handed handshakes, my hand sandwiched / between a pair of big beefy palms.

Weekends

A trip with a stranger, a roadside rescue, a missing husband

Inheritance

My great-aunt was not the type of lady to smoke / out on the porch. No, she lit up in her living room, and up / and down the stairs, and in her bedroom on hot / Mississippi nights with the windows thrown open.