Not the Plan
You didn’t answer, and you said you’d answer, just like he’d said, I’ll be here reading the Times til you come home, and when I came home his car was gone. And he was gone. And his phone lay under a pillow in our bed, which was not the plan. His death certificate in my...
Like Nothing Ever Happened
The thing about a Derek Jarman movie is when you find yourself crying you don’t know why you’re crying, not exactly. It’s the layering of everything. Like the memory of seeing his movies at the Castro Theatre in the early-‘90s when everyone was dying, we were watching or trying not to watch but we were...
after creating change
after the daylong trans institute after 300 people crammed in a room that seats 90 after the listening panel feedback session where folks hurl love & rage & are talked over & disrespected after the trans & disabled caucus asks the lesbian caucus to keep it down so we can hear each other & they...
Raiment
When my father stopped eating and we all understood it was a matter of time, I drove from Vermont to Boston to see him at the nursing home. He’d suffered a steady decline and lost the ability to care for himself, but his memory and cognitive abilities did not have the savage gaps of Alzheimer’s....
Grief-Keeping
The first prayer I remember was shma ysrael Adonai elohaynu… trailing off into quiet murmurings of twitching lips, children’s hands covering their eyes as they recited the rest of the prayer. Too holy of a moment, in case God decided to appear. You cover your eyes to concentrate, the rabbi reminds us. Australian raptors carry...
Darning
I am a grandmother of two middle-school-aged girls who call me “Granny,” and I darn socks. Not many people these days take the time to do it. People will throw holey socks away and buy new ones. As I darn in my wooden rocking chair, I know that with my white hair I look like...
Bone & Skin
1. I tell you I’m getting a tattoo to cover my scars. Some kind of tree, perhaps, the branches reaching across one scar, the roots wrapped around another. A living thing. An ancient bristlecone, a saguaro, a juniper, purple with berries. “You’re allergic to juniper,” you say, and I nod. I do not ask, “But...
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