Needless to say, it’s been a long time since I’ve written. The fall months have swirled up and overhead, dried leaves rushing away from me, ungraspable. These months have been a whirlwind of academic rigor in my doctorate program, while the real conquest has been unspoken for. These months my mother has slipped quietly into… Read more »
That Tuesday I awoke early before the sunrise and walked myself like an eager, panting dog along the quiet sidewalk, strung against the hues of pale golden light. In the gray I contemplated, in the amber I celebrated: her life. I met her in mid-town Manhattan on the morning of her 60th birthday. Would I… Read more »
To say the words feels equivalent to conjuring fiendish spirits. To write out the significance of this approaching month- this precarious, shifty month- feels equivalent to summoning thieves, to doing rain dances after cyclones. To give words to it feels heedless and irresponsible. If I speak the words, I evoke it, I summon it, I… Read more »
Why does it feel impossible to imagine your mother as anything but that, when up until you she was everything but that? I remember when I was eight years old. The sun peeking in, cool dew blanketing the lawn, her voice a tether rope pulling me from sleep. Her voice rod-stout and firmly soiled. My… Read more »
‘I have a secret to tell you.’ The room is painted mustard. Her voice is a thread above a whisper. They watch her like a dreamed President. She stands before them with a promise; they all want the truth. No one is older than 10 in her 5th-grade classroom. 15 sets of eyes are sunken… Read more »
06/07/08 The bus sighs and coughs to a halt. I awake startled from sleep on the overnight bus from Bangkok to Mae Sot, Thailand. We’re stopped on the side of the road. It’s a thickened midnight despite my watch reading 5 a.m. A Thai police officer walks the aisles, holding his flashlight like a baton.… Read more »
