the terrarium

She runs away before winter solstice, is gone through Christmas Eve and Christmas, comes home right before New Year’s, looking ruddier, more vibrant. Home being relative, and in this case referring to the place she keeps the most stuff. The most jackets and the most boots and the most dresses and the most diaries. Also […]

on being ebullient

Just as visiting Paris as an adult sprung her fifteen-year-old self, meeting him as a full-blown woman springs someone even younger. “You foolish little girl,” he chides her, on occasion, which fosters this rejuvenescence even further, and sends her back to a time when, like now, he played the role of her shepherd. ~ “This […]

on unlearning

I don’t plan to cry when he leaves—that’s not the girl I am at all—but it sneaks up on me when I put my head down in the crook of his neck. His shirt is so soft and it strikes me hard and fast that no one is going to be here to tuck me […]

it can always start over

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 […]

a tiny bit stupid, but with a very smart heart

It’s been forever since I’ve written anything, and now I have this desire to sum up particular aspects of the last couple years of my life and get on with it. Though perhaps not without proving I learned some things first. I certainly can’t allow myself years that meant nothing. In that vein, my first […]

the hospital room

  I went so long without seeing him. Forever really. Long enough, I speculated, for us to become two entirely different people, and unrecognizable. But there he is, when I enter, sitting up in bed with his reading glasses on, hospital gown backwards, chest exposed, and looking just as erudite and handsome and savage as […]

oft lost

It’s Christmas in the year 2017 and I’m in two-bedroom suite in a tall hotel. Outside the the snow falls, which makes my son happy and therefore makes me happy. I sit with my morning coffee next to the window, beyond which a gondola runs the length of a mountain’s incline. I find the gondola’s […]

On Loving Melancholy

I am with Melancholy today. I haven’t spent much time with Melancholy lately, but that isn’t to say we’re strangers. We used to hang out a lot, in fact. Anyway, today we’re bedfellows. Today we’re tucked under a high pile of blankets with the shades drawn and a mess of clothes and books on the […]

partial

The entrepreneur was not surprised when we broke up. “I feel like you’ve been breaking up with me in slow motion for a long time,” was how he phrased it. “So I’ve mostly processed this.” This on an evening in his house, the first time I’d been sober in his presence in a lot of […]

a few years back

Tony initially takes our break-up wonderfully. “The way I see it,” he tells me, “you’re allergic to commitment. You’ve always lauded me as being a well-endowed man of swagger and wit. So clearly this has nothing to do with me.” I nod. This version of the story is as good as, if not better than, any […]