Suffering
I first laid eyes on her in a Massachusetts State House conference room. She was taking notes during a debate over a new voting rights bill. I was there as an ambitious investigative reporter in search of an interesting story. I nudged Lucas, my friend and fellow reporter. “Know her?” I asked. He leaned into me and whispered. “Jessica Boyd. Committee staffer.” He frowned, shaking his head. “She’s involved with some dude named Leo.” I accepted the information as gospel. Lucas—single and always on the hunt—knows the skinny on every Beacon Hill mark. I recorded her name in my...
Read Moremy partner sneaks me sunshine while the doctors look away
and I pocket the little rays in my gurney while they perform sonic echoes of my heart and the lines rise and fall and rise and fall. There’s abnormalities banging around in my chest; raccoons in the wall, feverously knocking, then pausing, waiting for me to catch another breath. But my partner sings through tears, her hazel eyes a constant throughout these tumultuous times spent monopolizing my care from hospital to hospital around the Greater Boston area. If Uber rides could talk they would erupt with chimes of laughter through failed insulin pods, windmilling, blurring together like the...
Read MoreThe Mathematics of Love
0+1, 1+1, 1+2, ad infinitum. 5 is where my understanding fades. Ah, Fibonacci, I wear sequins when I try to make sense of your sequences; nautilus shells and horny rabbits. Mona Lisa and the recipe for Mr. Coffee— 1-2 tablespoons of Bustelo for every 6 ounces of water are based on your formulae. When I eat spanakopita at the Nautilus Diner, I devour your golden triangle. You would think my favorite number would be 55, but it is 69, the number my sister and I shouted at the dinner table even before we knew what it meant. I don’t think our parents ever got it or did it, I never did it,...
Read MoreWhat a Parasite Would Say
“I know now what I can offer you that no one else can: complete and utter dependence!” – Homer Simpson My hostess, home, how often I’ve thought of hemiparasitism and passed. Mistletoe can perform photosynthesis if it wants, but I work smarter than hard and the name belies me. I blame the haustorium. It was so easy to grow into you that I cannot now imagine how I’d begin to grow out. And what with the nutrients, I couldn’t imagine wanting to. I’m a blight, not a bulldozer. Do you need all those branches? I spare my leaves and berries for...
Read MoreTree and Grass
As grass is flexible, a tree is tough: thus each endures a normal season’s wind. Another year, when one gale’s cruel enough to fell a forest, lowly grasses bend; tall, stubborn trees throb in magnificence and fight, but fail. Stumps watch the grass spring back and envy the benign resilience they know, with all their might, they sorely lack. I couldn’t help but try to reach the sky where you, my angel, lived. I loved your breeze, and shimmering in it, but was malcontent with being walked upon like grass. So I resisted and reached higher, and was rent, just as a wicked wind...
Read MoreDear Memory II
December snow, an unattended wedding— bridge, siphon for what no longer pertained, sound of lumbering cumulus, sludge hugging ditches, on a walk to a hidden bistro. Pockets flush with crumpled cigarettes, an old cell phone—your kiss lingered in my mind, enticing me over a long weekend to be redeemed. Song echoed in my bones— bad news, albatross, melody burning my throat, but I assented to the torment. Until you left for school— sleeping late, mimicking unwavering pines, hushed moon, your voice the music in my dream, I awoke to a knock, almost thinking I’d open the door, before I...
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