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Glimpses

This is how we say I love you in my family:
“I stopped the truck to move two toads off the driveway last night.”
“The walking iris has three blooms on it today.”
“On my way to work, a fox crossed the road with a mallard in its mouth.”

All Night

A 24-hour diner, a hospital late shift, a conversation you don’t want to end

T-Shirts

Poorly—and purposefully—placed slogans, baby-goat encounters, and uncanny AOL connections

Chores

On a solo backpacking trip, in a desert military base, at a church revival

Nectar

It was an old tradition he had once told her about: When there was a death in the household, the beekeeper would go out to tell the bees about it. The thought was that, if the bees were not told, they would abscond. They were members of the family. Their feelings would be hurt if they were overlooked.

So he was doing it. Telling them. Romantic fool.

Tents

On a solo backpacking trip, in a desert military base, at a church revival

Keening for the Cailleach

The best nights are when moonlight comes through the trees, casting indigo shadows across the ice. My partner swoops around, his arms swinging in front of his crouched body. “It’s the closest we get to flying,” he said once as he sailed past me. Another time: “Maybe this is how a dolphin feels carving through the water.” He loves the tension of the blade slicing across the surface, the whoosh of his skates drawing elaborate patterns on the ice, the crunch of a hockey stop. I listen for the occasional owl.

Crossroads

Imani Perry on the South’s Vital Place in America’s Identity

The South is made to carry the nation’s slop jar. That’s deliberate, because then the United States doesn’t have to actually contend with all of its violence. We just put the blame on that region where bad stuff happens and where those backward people are. I don’t think it’s incidental, either, that it is the Blackest region culturally (and demographically) speaking. So it is at once seen as the most racist and the Blackest.

Sunbeams

I’m not sure which matters more—where the seed comes from, or where it takes root and grows.

Zetta Elliott, A Wish After Midnight