“No way,” I said. “I hate that church.”
Heads raised in surprise. I looked down at my plate of Christmas Eve meatballs, chest swelling and constricting with confusion. I hated that church? Seriously? Wasn’t that an ignorant thing to say? As a Unitarian I’ve always claimed to be open to other ideas and curious about all [...]
I.
Here is how it is with you:
Every day I wonder what is missing.
Cracks in the sidewalk. I avoid them, wouldn’t
want to break her back,
smaller things, still
I would not say to you.
You are lovely and white-teethed
and whenever I am around you I feel slovenly,
misplaced
like a garage sale item in a department store.
Sometimes you call, although we [...]
I somehow found myself squeezed into a bike shop in Providence around midnight, dolled up in black tights and a short grey skirt, hair twisted and pinned back with bobby pins. I was surrounded by the kind of people I might be today, had I made a few different choices a few years ago. Unshowered, [...]
Johnny Cash and June Carter got married in a fever, and I flew into Chicago in the middle of a blizzard. It was the mid-morning, and I’d never seen the city covered in snow before: it made it seem friendlier somehow, softer around the edges. I suppose it just felt like home.
Backpacked and bundled, I [...]
I somehow found myself at a Christmas formal for the MassGen hospital’s cardiac unit, surrounded by shiny-haired couples wearing red ties and black velvet. Nat King Cole crooned from behind sparkling trees, and somewhere, someone made an inside joke involving prosthetic limbs.
“How do I wind up in these fancy things,” I thought to myself, poking [...]