Fresh from the shower on an 80-degree day that feels thick with the promise of Summer, Adam spins–literally–into the kitchen wearing flannel pajama pants–buffalo check–and a salt-washed long-sleeved t-shirt as blue as his eyes. I wonder how he doesn’t instantly feel that sticky prickle of after-shower sweat at the base of the neck and the […]

Just home from a walk with a friend–skin flushed with sun; fallen petals from the cherry trees stowaways in my hair, on the edge of my shirt, even precariously crumpled against one sticky ankle–and Riley comes to meet me at the door. I hear her carefully set down whatever she has in her hands; I […]

Riley sits at the bar, fresh-faced and bright, if still a little rumpled with sleep. She looks like Spring, like the first day of sapphire skies; like new flowers with blushing, velvet leaves; like anticipation; like hope sitting right there on a bench in my kitchen., and it’s striking to me because it’s the opposite […]

This morning, I feel the outer crumbling, how slowly I waste away–not me, but the shell of me; the me you would recognize; the me you could touch, at least while we’re here. A cellular avalanche starts the moment our bodies begin to breathe; but breathe God and the opposite happens too. The resurrected body, […]

As soon as Kevin leaves the room, Riley slips through the open door and flops on the sofa beside me, hairbrush in one hand, all that hair still dark wet and snarled, swinging against her back and scattering droplets. Immediately I notice her red-rimmed eyes, but choose not to say anything at first, carefully sliding […]

Early, while the sky’s still grey, Riley comes downstairs, slowly, like always. From my chair in the living room, from the place where I sit still dark and curled, I can hear the fall of her feet. Her knees crack, an inherited weakness, as she plants herself on each step, and for a moment I […]

“So Adam, what did you do at school today?” The question, admittedly, feels familiar and worn, like a knob on an oft-opened and oft-slammed door, one we open today like every other day, honestly anticipating nothing save blank space. And for how long, I wonder, sitting here wearing my end-of-the-day weariness like grave clothes, can […]

Five minutes before we leave for school, I come down to check on Riley. Before I left the room in search of a shower, while she attended to what-I-don’t-know upstairs, I prepared for leaving at the right time, filling in steps I know otherwise will take her too long. I collected her morning pills (yes, […]

We can’t be sure when Adam first realized he had forgotten the wireless controller for his insulin pump, whether it occurred to him as he stood outside the door at school at the end of the day or only after he had climbed in the car to go home, or if he didn’t know until […]

I don’t know her name–not the sound of her voice, not even the shape of her smile. As it is these days, because of the mask she wears, her eyes—dark and determined and locked on mine–are all I know of her, those eyes and that hair, curling dark around her head in short, wild corkscrews. […]