nonfiction
another self emerges between assignments, to follow the dog into winter dusk and watch the snow fall. Not sociable, but perceiving
The land here is scarred and wrinkled.
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
Every time I come to the forest, it’s different, but so am I.
Our mission is not a drunken pub-crawl, per se, but examination of all possibilities…
I run with a pack of older boys from our neighborhood, the only girl.
The hamantaschen have followed us from apartment to apartment, all of the kitchens dark, cramped, cluttered.
Through the dusty window in my parent’s bedroom, I watched the neighbor’s cattle graze.
How do you even know when you’re there—at the epicenter?
It was an engagement of secrets in sunlit spaces.
The new octopus at the children’s aquarium was named Athena, and as we waited for her to emerge, I thought of the almost-too-faint second line on the pregnancy test three days before.
Infant’s Name: A
Delivery Date: August 1, 2002
My mother has been dead for two hundred and forty-three days. I’ve had plenty of things in my refrigerator for longer.
My dad was an inveterate theatergoer in the old country where theatre reigned supreme before the Soviets, under the Soviets, after the Soviets.
No matter how you try to ignore it, you look like him. You look like your father.
Could someone hating you really cause a physical unease? Sure, why not.
What possible use is this lengthy childhood? Surely there would be a selective advantage in maturing earlier, so children are less vulnerable to predation and mothers are freed up to have more children?
The weeks go like this: accepting, horny, hopeful, sad. I’m four different people trying to establish one perspective on a major life event – on the creation of life itself.
With great reluctance, I agree to meet a cousin for an outside lunch…
At twenty, the world is yours because you’re beautiful. But never acknowledge your beauty, or it makes you a bitch.