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Equinox

In the spring, during long twilit evenings lengthening slowly into night, we watch our mothers change. The pink on the filters of their cigarettes matches the pink on their rounded fingernails. We think somehow this color signals s-e-x, but we don’t understand, and it makes us want to hate them.

Traveling Stories

My father, though, seemed unaware of my contempt, and in June, as my high-school-graduation gift, he took me to Torremolinos, on the coast of Spain. He’d booked us a room at a midpriced, touristy hotel through some educator’s discount travel plan. We saw a bullfight. We swam.

Hair

A fashion show, a bike helmet, a confrontation on an elevator

Our Days

After my father died in 1973, my grandmother put newspaper over all the first-floor windows at night. Sometimes I wonder if she was more afraid of looking out than of someone looking in. She’d wait until after the six o’clock news to do the chore.

Utopia

Communal living, free love, a chicken coop

Career Counseling

The Game Of High School

Bob Penny, voted Most Self-Absorbed Hunk by a committee of me, said, I am in my big-boob period, as he pretended to swoon over Lisa Belia. I took his remark to be of the making-me-jealous variety. I didn’t even have to pretend to ignore it, because I was in love with you.

Manners

Licking your plate, listening to screams echoing up the stairwell, entertaining yourself​

The Technology Of Simplicity

When I was eleven or twelve, I used to go deer hunting with my father. He would wake me before dawn on cold, crisp October days, and we would dress silently in the dim glow of a night light, not wanting to awaken the rest of the house.

A Poem Beginning With A Line By Seal Scholars