It was most certainly a remember where you where when moment. I was a fifth grader walking back to class from the bathroom when I overheard a teacher in the hallway saying President Reagan had been shot. I had no idea what to make of that information. But I remember that teacher standing in the…
It’s back. The need to write. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to say. Sadness is on me. I read recently that that’s how they say “I’m sad” in Irish. That’s a good way to say it. Reminds you that sadness is not you, nor you it. What’s the difference between “I am sad” and “I…
This might be goodbye. If you ask me right now, this is goodbye. Right now, I’m done. How many more times will you reach out and disappear. How many more times will you suggest ideas, plans, locations, and vanish in smoke. How many more times will you ask my number, forget to save it, call…
She rarely got hacked off, but flag burning was on the news a time too many and she blew. Cried out how people shouldn’t burn that flag, they should get down on their knees and kiss it. Her sentence, like a lot of her sentences, started with no. Like a place-holder, with different meanings according…
Those three old ladies, those babushkas cloaked in fur. They exited the restaurant cackling, arm in arm in arm. Still, two of them slipped in the slush, and one fell on her ass. You’d think they’d know how to walk in it, what with their combined years. But they didn’t care, those drunk old beauties.…
I asked her once how she could smoke a cigarette and still taste so sweet. She just smiled and said “I’m cool like that.” I laughed, pulled her close but not close enough. I needed her inside my insides, her soul in my soul. And that’s what love is. The feeling of needing to be…
We think the neighbors are into porn. Watching it, making it, getting paid for it, something. They aren’t roofers, that’s for sure. They had the van repainted for roofing, as if they’d legitimately revamped their business. And they tried to recruit us as roofers, in a multi-level marketing kind of way. But they aren’t into…
She lived with us in that old house I grew up in, I know that now. She seemed to come and go, though I never saw her. And when we went, when we moved out after all those years and headed up north, I heard her silently pleading, screaming don’t go. I froze, alone in…
The businessmen rise early, dress smartly in tight pants and fleece vests. They map out their day, plan phone calls, taking care to sequence them properly. Many calls depend on prior ones, the results of previous conversations. Who reports to whom, who must know what by what time. Follow ups and proactive reachings-out. Partnerships and…
I dreamed about Kate last night. We sat behind her, me and the family, my wife and our girls, in Poland, in an auditorium, no leg room between our hard wooden seats and the ones in front, one of which was hers, Kate’s. As the massive crowd let out, outside, the girls ran ahead, as…
Milena was my partner for the ice breaker. I was fine with Milena, but I had my eyes on Agnieska, or Kate. We had to share our most memorable experience as teachers. The one where we deeply touched a student, I guess. I guess the point was to get us in the mood for touching…
After he won I was in shock for I-don’t-know how long. Weeks. Months. The world felt bizarre, surreal. I remember looking at people who looked like Republicans. I remember eating lunch in restaurants with people who looked like business people eating lunch. I’d come to know they were not to be trusted, but I didn’t…
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