Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
My delight at the ultrasound tech’s declaration, “It’s a girl,” was immediately followed by a heaviness and fear I associated with that specific gender reveal: the food thing. I did not feel this panic a year ago when the sex of my son was announced. Food things were girl things. Read more
Youngest leaves for college today. Our house appears to understand. Our house appears to understand. Water heater breaks, ceiling weeps. I grab a mop, sweep up the weeps. Sam the Appliance Man is booked. Every plumber in town is booked. She carries on, keeps packing up. Nothing stops her from Read more
The shape of heavy tears streaking down, earthwards, journeying to find our loved ones faces, again The shape of trembling lips the very moment we recall their forevermore absence as we write the date, on this day their birthday The shape of the book on the shelf in the store, Read more
August 2016 I’m kneeling in the aisle like a worshipper dropping tears into the white ceramic shell of an armadillo. What else would you do on your inaugural Target run in a new town you thought you would love but don’t even like? Read more
My mom had it. I know she had hair in all of the pictures of her before I was born. I know she had hair when I was little. I know she got her hair done at Menage e Trois Coiffers on Burton Way, and I didn’t know what “Menage Read more
I can’t remember where I was when Father got home that day. Probably, I was somewhere inside the house; maybe I was in the living room. Maybe sitting cross-legged on the dingy, frayed oriental rug that had tufts of cat and dog and probably human hair tangled in its tassels Read more
Just be glad you can get pregnant, they say. Just be glad it happened early before you got too attached. Just be glad your body took care of it and you didn’t need a D&C. Just be glad you don’t live in a state that would treat you as a Read more
Baltimore, Maryland July 1985 I curled two fingers under the chin of my mask and tore it off. I chipped away at myself with the tip of a syringe when no one else would do it for me. The nurse’s assistant, the friend of a friend’s cousin from the suburbs, Read more