Perhaps what’s closer to the truth is that single adoptive fathers are a parental rarity, and the social stigma around them displaying overt, touch-based affection is not an issue for mothers or more traditional fathers.
Suppose we surprised him coming off the path into the patch of pines and saw palmettos, two girls with our child-sized bikes. Suppose he had a reason to chase us back to the path, his pale face flushed with—what? Desire? Wrath?
Claudia Emerson, who died in December 2014, had come to be known as a poet capable of revealing startling discoveries inside quiet, quotidian circumstances. Her poems are set mostly in Southern rural and small-town scenes, moments in...
Water, I learned, was the most abundant element in nature whose only value came from controlled and measured distribution. Our lives invariably revolved around its input and output, and the same rules which governed the natural world were...
