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The Third Floor
Her tears wet my shoulder. I hardly knew her. Three minutes earlier, we’d been standing next to a cement pillar, talking quietly but intensely. Our bodies were close, the conversation intimate. An onlooker would have guessed we’d known each other for years. Yet I’d only spoken to Molly a couple of times before–in the locker room, maybe once in yoga class…
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The Lost and Found of Translation
I don’t have a favorite book. I have multitudes of favorite books–linked to specific phases of my life, places I’ve been while reading them, reasons why they were just the right book at the right time. In truth, many of my favorite books aren’t remarkable, from a writerly standpoint, yet they are important to me,…
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Murmurs
He was such a nice guy, one of the first to make us feel comfortable when we moved to the village in central Turkey. Thus, it was a shock when he asked me to become his mistress. Because his store was on the main drag, on a corner our family passed whenever we walked home, we…
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Going the Distance
It’s almost 11 p.m. We’re waiting for her call. Byron would like to go to sleep. Yet I would like him to be the one who responds to her. My legs are tired. I’m in my pajamas, a glass of wine on the side table. When she calls or texts, she will tell us she’s…
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Dear Diary: A Few Hours Later
Dear Diary: I’ve scrubbed the pressure cooker, eaten some delicious ham-and-white-bean soup, and have a few minutes now to finish up this entry about that Saturday last month when nothing much happened. You know me: it’s not a “nothing much happened” kind of day until I’ve written 5,000 words about it. No wonder you’re always bulging at the…
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Dear Diary, Thirty-Three Years Later
Dear Diary: Me again. Hey, so I visited one of your predecessors a few weeks back, and, boy, did that totally bitchin’ trip back to the early 1980s reaffirm my love for Rush’s lead singer Geddy Lee; since then, my Spotify’s been cranking “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice” ’til a thin…
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Dear Diary
Dear Diary: Let me begin with an apology. I know I’ve neglected you these last few years–since 1985, in fact, when I went to college, and life took off. During my freshman year, for example, I spent at least two weeks giggling over the name Balzac. Then I made some friends, and quite often…
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Bappy Hirfday to Me
I turn 48 today, and, oh, the joy of it! Behind me are the days of wishing, hoping, longing, wondering. Here now are the days of loving, laughing, appreciating, and clarity. I’m in the thick of it, this business of a happy life, wanting to hug it all to me, hard, while it’s happening. There are…
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Grit
It was a glorious spring day, the hard edges of the air softening into mildness, the sun reflecting in puddles, spirits sitting up and stretching their arms to the sky. Awaking from the freeze of winter, everyone was out running, walking, looking faintly stunned by the exposed squares of sidewalk. In the free-flowing hour before…
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A Message for the White People
Photo: “Clayton-Jackson-McGhie-memorial-Duluth-Minnesota” by Carol M. Highsmith – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Collection. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. ——————————————— The teens found a photo of their classmate and made some changes to it. The classmate is a young black man. They drew a noose around his neck and added the words “Gotta hang ‘em all” and shared…
