When we get home from our trip, the package awaits, a kit Adam bought for Kevin’s birthday, a light-up speaker they can build together. Riley sits the box carefully at Kevin’s place at the dinner table so he can open it later, along with the rest of the mail that came while we were away. […]

“At least I’m doing something,” Zoe says, shadow-mumbling, making reckless half-spins in my office chair, turned to face Kevin and me, coffee mug cradled in her hands. “I mean, I’m trying.” I wait for a wave of hot coffee to crest and spill over the side of her mug, wait for it to drip from […]

In the morning, we friends gather on Zoom, collecting on a screen the way we once surrounded coffee shop tables, dropping handbags on the floor, dragging over extra chairs, only now new windows open into presence in front of us like blinking eyes, and here I sit at home with my wet-from-the-shower hair, and we […]

In our many hours of learning, we learn how to pray. I pass out empty index cards because my children, who find it hard to function without discernment of the edges, need discrete lines, spaces they can see in which to realize and organize real hopes into real petitions. The moments to consider, to plan, […]

I kneel next to Adam’s feet, a piece of string stretched along the floor, Sharpie poised. “Don’t move,” I tell him, which comes close to telling Adam not to breathe. He stands in place, but shifts a thin, wide hand to one hip. His toes drift up from the floor and I press them back […]

After dinner, we settle our forks on plates smeared delicious, and I give thanks. Around one sentence gather so many gifts: dinner, delicious, we. Adam stands, reaches for Kevin’s plate, then mine, stacking them with careful clatter beneath his own. His eyes flick past Riley, who still needs to finish a few bites, to Zoe, […]

After dinner, gathered around the blessing-table, our emptied, sopped-up plates abandoned like islands, our bodies weary from the day, we feast on family. “We should play a game,” Kevin says, and I get up to look in the cabinet where we keep them. Adam follows, towering behind me, swaying like a pendulum. For Adam, stillness […]

In the window, the orchid’s petals drop, crisp and thin, like elegant parchment cut-outs piling in drifts on the sill. Their rose hue has faded to ivory; they age like paper, but far more quickly. I cup my hand, sweeping in the soft, dead things, murmuring about the loss of another fragile life. “I wonder […]

Dumbbells gripped in hand, lifted over me like the weight that knots my neck, I remember thinking only of what will be next, after this. I used to plot it out by the hour, how I’d manage to do my way through the morning and into the afternoon. And then, and then, and then. How […]

I slide my thumbs over the curves of an apple, holding it under the tap. Water splashes over Granny Smith green, green like early leaves with sun shining through. Before slicing in, before bruising the fruity flesh, I wash. The water chills my thumbs, my palms. Zoe leans on the bar, suddenly open, telling me […]