Surf
Peter says, “I can’t sleep in this relentless surf.” “You’re the one who loves ritual and repetition.” “Ritual, yes. But this pounding is relentless.” We are sitting on the screened porch of our friend Fita’s beach house, Alligator Point near Tallahassee, watching the sun slide down from cirrus to cirrus in a blaze of lavender, hot...
The Last Time I Climbed A Mountain
There are a thousand things I can’t recall: the date, the place, the details of the trail. I was nineteen, maybe twenty. It was a strong ascent, somewhere above St. Gallen in the Alps. All the rest has gone to mist. What stays: the incandescent sunshine. How the air bit thin and clean against my...
We Are Galaxies, Briefly
The last time I saw the other Ryan we were grown men, sitting in the same church pew where we had been boys, still blood brothers only now not quite believers, listening to the bishop talk about the devil flaying souls in outer darkness, that unimaginative name in Mormon cosmology given to the place for...
Remember?
Slow processing speed. Major deficits in executive functioning and short-term memory. Normal left and right hippocampal volume with low left and right hippocampal occupancy. * Here is the translation: His broken handwriting, his stricken face, his blank or puzzled or fearful eyes. Doors and drawers standing open, lights left on wherever he goes. Two lamps...
Recognizing Eternal Moments in Narrative Nonfiction
A writer too sure of her material and destination can weaken her potential to discover new insights, ideas and connections as she writes. On its face, nonfiction seems more vulnerable to this than fiction and poetry. All three may begin with real-world events or memories, but fiction and poetry automatically release these events from the...
It Hurts to Go Home: Writing What Doesn’t Belong Only to You
I don’t remember the Pences’ pink magnolia tree until I’m looking up at it, pinching a fallen blossom between my thumb and forefinger until the petal bruises a light brown. My childhood home is across the street. I’ve just gone in for the first time in thirteen years, met the new father, the new son...
Memory Palace, Visit No. 3
On my third visit to the memory palace I found the king. He was under a table laden with apples. He was wearing that campy red gown, velour, with the white trim, and the crown, too, which had rubies, sapphires, and emeralds in it. Now in this palace also were portraits of warriors and kings...
Life in the Alley
I wasn’t old enough to go to school, and sitting on the front porch watching the cars go by on Fourth Avenue was the most of what I did, when I wasn’t looking down Zion’s Alley at the lives of black people, which I did from the upstairs window when I was sick at heart. (“Sick...
And There’s Your Mother, Calling Out to You: In Pursuit of Memory
Before I sat down to write this essay, I stepped outside and took a walk. Always a walk before I write. I hadn’t counted on the winds, or the pewter-colored clouds massing overhead and crowding out the sun. The first drops of rain were a sweet release from heat. After that, it was an all-out...
The Ankle Bone’s Connected to the Memory Bone
I start with a confession about my body. I have a trick ankle. Say I’m walking in heels, or sensible shoes, it hardly matters which, and everything’s fine, I’m moving forward, until in less than an instant I find myself on the ground, a sharp pain shooting up my right calf. The first time this...
The Ant in the Water Droplet: Locating the Mystery within Memory
The memories we have of our lives are not a continuous narrative. Instead, they are more akin to the several arcs of a skipping stone—three, four, five, six splashes and onward. Flash nonfiction is in many ways an ideal form to capture the world of those splashes of memory, fueled by the energy of the...
Archilochus Colubris, First Sighting
They are so young, so much younger than I am now. My father with his trousers hugging his bottom—it’s 1978, and he’s 25 years old. My mother with her honey-long hair. The little yellow cabin, blackberried, with a small lawn over a scrubby cliff and a scale of beach stairs. The afternoon sun blazes but...
Beginnings
Late October, 1969. I’m three years old. We’re driving at night on a country road outside Culpeper, Virginia, to visit my recently widowed grandmother. No moon or lights. We have only the reach of the high beams to see by. I sit between my parents in the front seat. My mother is six months pregnant...
Archipelago
When I was thirteen, my family and I left our home in the West Indies. On the day of our departure I plucked a red hibiscus, putting it in the pocket of my French madras skirt. I lagged behind my family as we walked from the tin-hangar airport, crossed the tarmac, and climbed into the...
A Bilingual Halloween
For thirty-five years she’s been speaking English. At a Korean orphanage, at age nine, she began learning English by memorizing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” learning that in English puppies woof woof, rather than mong mong, and that cats meow rather than yayong. She and her seventy-nine friends sang to the American Marines, sailors, and...
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