A Chagall Figure in the Night
“There you are,” my mother greeted me. “I was beginning to think you’re not coming.” “The bus connections were terrible, but I called the hospital. They won’t get to you until late afternoon.” My mother had fallen and broken her hip yesterday. “I still don’t know how it happened. Lillian came in with fresh linens and I started to get up from the armchair. My legs folded under and then, I was in pain, on the floor.” “Did your head spin? Did you feel lightheaded?” “No, I felt...
Read MoreJanuary Thaw
Winter came early and hard that year in Vermont. Tirelessly it had tantrumed, since October’s end. So, as the two of them sat that January noon, at opposite corners of the sofa, those few inches between them a masonry, the heated air between them as thick as gelatin, that nigh space separating them as arbitrary, but as undeniable, as incontrovertible as the border between warring states, they did not at once note the sunlight streaming through the windowpane. “You’re going to have to live with that,” Sarah snapped. “It’s all I ever wanted. ...
Read MoreThe Letter
It showed up on a Saturday in mid-December, stuck between two pieces of junk mail. I would have missed it if not for the wet, folded corner that stuck out like a thumb. The envelope was made of cheap, wrinkled paper, and there was no return address, but the postmark was from Boston. I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at it as though it were a weapon. This was around noon. As usual, the rest of the day spread before me like an ocean. After turning it over in my hands at least a dozen times I tore into it to find a single piece of lined loose-leaf paper on which she had written in blue...
Read MoreEve
It began as a simple assignment. As an upcoming — read struggling — photographer, I took whatever jobs I was offered. One of those happened to be taking pictures of women. When I told my friends, they laughed and raised their glasses. They slapped my shoulders, stinging my skin. I laughed along, though I didn’t find this funny. I told myself it was experience, and I mentioned it on my resumé without drawing too much attention to the details. So the gig became a fixture, the fixture a job. It wasn’t sexy. Some of the girls who arrived were scared witless, desperate to be something...
Read MoreYou See My Arms Open
I say this before all that is your world: a fortress-fiefdom in Sweden, blue bull tracks threading autumn, one who needs proofs to love, the puppet plays of Chikamatsu, stone breakers in weatherproof boots. You see, I become nothing but a gravitational collapse in time’s cracked rigging-shells, an ice crystal sleeping with uncertainty a kitchen god nestling in the void, or a river flowing into a nethermost wind until I am with you. So, you eater of ashes, fling those proofs aside and open your mind too long asleep with death, learn to breathe the way love sets free in...
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