Django lives with me for 18 years and five months, in a myriad of settings, alongside a dubious host of characters, and then, one day, before getting in a truck and driving away, he sits me down in front of his piano. “I have a song for you,” he tells me. “It’s called The Farewell.” […]
So we move to a large and isolated house, with marble floors that are cold on my bare feet, and life starts over again. If there is one aspect of my story of which I am certain, it is this: It can always start over. I don’t know how to talk about the life I’m […]
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 got like all cut up again, like inside, a few weeks ago. All this many recovering days later, the blood still trickles out of me, when it wants. Reminding me that it happened. But I don’t recognize it anymore as belonging to me. I’m detached from all the private betrayals. Using up what I still […]
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 […]
I’m having another episode. I’m never sure what to do when this happens, and at first I tend to respond by thrashing wildly. Grasping at nearby surfaces as I plummet, only to watch them loosen and break too. Far better once I recognize the hopelessness of struggle, as at least I can leave off bringing […]
There is something that I have to tell you now. Something I’ve been trying to avoid. But that isn’t going away. My sister is dying of cancer. I was told this by a mother with whom I am not otherwise in contact. Which used to be her choice. And now is mine. There are those who […]
my delusions 