It comes to me, the freedom in not needing to know, like the tickle of a wild wind on my emptied palms, when a friend asks what time our flight, Kevin’s and mine, leaves for Boston. We walk down a greenway trail, around a bend I’ve never seen, in a place I’ve never been, near […]

Unprotected, that’s the word my friend chooses.  I feel unprotected. I cradle my coffee mug, sipping, immediately drawn to that word as my mind spins to its opposite, making a connection, like a jagged line across the page.  My friend has been describing a problematic relationship, how vulnerable she feels every time the potential for […]

I looked pretty bad, on paper, that’s my thought, tears clinging to the bottom edge of my jaw like dew drops on a limb, Adam’s chilly fingers reaching for my ear, saying, love love love, asking tentatively, in his silent, tender way, if I’m okay. But listen, I’m actually better than okay today. I glance […]

In the predawn, I spread my journal open on my lap, smoothing the pages, pressing tape down to affix to the blank page a card I received for my birthday.  Slowly, I reread every word, tracing the curling signature with my thumb, determined to actively take hold of love. There will be days when I’m […]

“No Band-Aid.  Not right now.  I don’t like it,” Adam says, the ‘don’t’ coming across pointedly, as though Riley might otherwise misunderstand the rising volume, the sharp tone, in which he speaks.  She kneels in front of him, her knees pressing into the floor, brassy hair swinging against bright cheeks, gently tugging at the heel […]

Unraveling heavy things, my friend tells me a story about taking her kids to see the dinosaur exhibit at the museum. “In the beginning…” She doesn’t use those words, not exactly, but she might as well have, because right from the beginning it feels as though her story belongs to me too somehow, belongs to […]

“Uh oh, I lost track,” Adam murmurs, when suddenly I press the brake a little too hard and the car lurches, at the exact moment when also I resentfully glare at the massive dump truck lumbering and grunting just ahead, when secretly I tuck a selfish, incredulous why into a shadowy part of my heart. […]

For the better part of an hour, I listen to our engaged couple getting ready to go for a walk. They arrive at the moment together after lunch, having noted and discussed at length that, in the plan I had helped them create for the afternoon, a walk comes next.  I hear them still processing […]

On a Wednesday, I sit waiting for physical therapy, twisting my stiff neck to look as a woman walks in with an ash-black smudge right in the center of her forehead. This looks like no accidental blemish I’ve ever seen, and for a moment, feeling a little uncomfortable for her, I wonder how it came […]

“Have you changed your sheets recently?”  I ask over lunch, just as Riley stabs at her salad with her fork, catching up a bit of lettuce, a brilliant coin of carrot. It’s true of us all: we can think no one knows where we’ve been, that no one knows we’ve walked right off course for […]