Things hurt now, in a new way, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. I go out night-walking with headphones, careful to avoid the train tracks, and sometimes I try to decipher what this pain is. I want to understand it, and to be able to explain it. The closest I can come is that […]
You get the news about your sister in that time of night that is so late it’s actually morning. You have just finished having sex, have just finished brushing your teeth, have just finished donning the pajamas assigned to you. You’re some weird combination of empty and full, and right as you climb into bed […]
So my son and I, in keeping with things we do best, check ourselves into a hotel, and tonight, muscles all a-spasm from the scaling of a 14,265 foot peak at dawn, break into the spa and fold back the cover of the small, salt-water pool. “Um, are we supposed to be here?” my son […]
I’m so tired sometimes, like I’ve seen it all, lived it all, before. Twice. Maybe three times. And I’ve always been one to just drift with the current, I think, as it has never made much sense to put so terribly much effort into trying to build something, trying to control the result, while intimately […]
Every day now, I take my sister to receive brain radiation. She gets locked into a mask and affixed to a table, a box is lowered over her head, and she squeezes her eyes closed while a searing light steals what’s left of her cognition. And in turn, perhaps, extends her life by a few months. […]
As an adult, all of the memories she has about him fall under one simple category: Sad Lessons on Life & Love. Still, as a child, there was Daddy. Bringing her presents and leaving her notes in his left-handed scrawl, each one confirming how absolutely wonderful she was. Feeding her on his oration and tucking her in […]
We were vacationing on the coast the night that Dad died. And when we came back, our things had all been packed up. Arrangements were made for us to live for a while in the mountains, in a pair of rooms bestowed on us by Mr. Craig, Dad’s former boss. Just for a year or two, while Mum got […]
I finally reached my sister’s hospital room on the night of Christmas Eve, in the year that I was 24, she 28. Her head was a swollen mess of bruises and stitches and blood and hair. I’d caught a ride with a stranger to find the girl I’d loved for all these awful years so close to gone that […]
Shortly after Mum threw the hammer at my little brother, I was finally awarded custody of him. It was a mixed blessing. Tripp, at 14, and I, at 24, were both relieved to have finally escaped Mum’s reach. But Tripp was already suffering from damage that would take far more than my custody of him to […]
Somehow, my son finds a picture of my mum this week. It’s all such a long story, and it never really stops. Despite the fact that I shed people regularly, the way a snake sheds its skin. “You look just like her!” Django tells me, that laughter in his voice when he knows he’s found […]
my delusions 