I barely knew the first person who left me. She was beautiful, intelligent, strong. I knew that. She was also cancer-ridden. Lymphoma tore ravenously through her body until she was a thin and fragile casing of herself. The woman I had once quietly admired from across the room at every family gathering was dying. To [...]

The halls of my junior high were louder the day after my father died, full of audible whispers comprising a cacophony of sympathy I was not ready to accept, not ready to hear echoing off lockers I once looked forward to opening daily.
Strangers looked at me with tears in their eyes. Teachers spoke gently, pulled [...]

My body, this
body, that has
nothing to do
with who
I am.
-Sandra Cisneros, from Well, If You Insist
I don’t know when I started needing to use past tense whenever I talked about your finest moments, but I do know I use past tense now.
You were always strong, always athletic, always moving. You were adventurous and brave, definitely too [...]

“I’ve always liked the time before dawn because there’s no one around to remind me who I’m supposed to be, so it’s easier to remember who I am.” -from a Brian Andreas print my babycarrot sister gifted me last year.
————
I’m thinking tonight.
I’m wondering: why do we settle? For less of everything that was once promised. [...]

My father. My father was tall, like me. Dark-haired. Thin. He wore a mustache, well and often, and tanned easily. I loved his hands, always shaking slightly because of medication he took to balance the madness that sometimes danced in his head. I loved his smile, his laugh like bare feet hanging off a dock [...]

Thanksgiving, the holiday, is difficult for my family. More specifically, it’s difficult for my grandmothers, on both my mom’s and my dad’s sides of the family.
For one grandmother the day is filled with family, with daughters who have grown and formed families of their own. And while there are truly so many blessings to count, [...]

Today Chris and I received news that a long-time colleague of Chris’ has suddenly, unexpectedly passed away. I always hated that phrase: “passed away,” but really I don’t know another way to describe it. He’s gone, and that is all and the end of it.
We know little else at the moment. No one seems to [...]

I’ve always thought the way life stops for nothing, not really, not ever, is one of the saddest, and yet most beautiful parts of life. Strange, but beautiful.
I remember that after my dad died, I waited for something, for anything, to stop. To just wait a minute, for our sake. But life was bustling, and [...]

He can’t decide whether to sink or swim, and so, he floats, mostly face-down, tilting his head every so often to taste the promise of air in his lungs. He’s been at it so long he’s almost convinced himself his dead man’s float is “living.”
She hurls tears on the days he won’t validate her feelings [...]

“It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” -Anne Sexton
I remember the way he had to hunch himself over to hug me. Until the day he didn’t have to anymore. I was twelve. I remember that, too: suddenly, unexpectedly, being tall enough to reach him. Tall enough to see [...]