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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.
December 2021
Jewish 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
November 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.
October 2021Sisters
The kind you’re born with, the kind you choose, the kind that teach Catholic school
October 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.
August 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.
June 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.
April 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.
March 2021
Birthday
Ropes pulled tight at the huge plastic tarp / we tied from the house to the trees / like a sail, in case it rained. / It rained. I became fifty. Then the sun shone, / then the moon.
February 2021
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