I think of my daughter, with two passports and a mother who will be eighty when she is forty. I have essentially created the potential for her to experience the same predicament I’m currently living in—a mother to worry about, the possibility of living an ocean away and holding guilt and grief. (nonfiction)
I am attached to a headset by a red wire. Like a dog to a tree, I can reach only as far as the cord allows. When a call comes, I answer: 988 lifeline this is … and speak aloud my alias. (nonfiction)
Tim hopped out of his parked diesel Jetta, his naturally orange hair prominent against the brisk, late January day. He said, “Stay here for a second, Stever. I’ve got something for us.” (nonfiction)
After a long hospitalization, my father returns home to die on January 2025’s coldest day—the Thursday after Orthodox Christmas. The packed snow on the steep, gravel driveway leading to his house is a slick, icy sheet… (nonfiction/Ukraine)
The summer heat sprawls on my skin like a thick cover of wet glue.
(nonfiction)
But the answer, I like to think, is that the Raven Grill offers not so much “nevermore” but “furthermore.”
(nonfiction)
After the woman / tells him how that first night really went. After months pass, / and this child is born. After this child’s first birthday, / first day of school, First Communion, first love, / first loss, first child, that child’s first introduction to Grandpa.
(nonfiction)
Only the life of a human being has meaning, but we cannot decide what that meaning is.
(nonfiction)
Years passed. The joke continued. So did the dustings.
(nonfiction)
I loved her. But I never, ever felt close to her. The few times I tried to speak honestly to her as I struggled to understand how I’d come to see the world as I did, she was so hurt that it would have been cruel to persist.
(nonfiction)
