I cannot remember the last meal I shared with my father. Only those long last nights slipping him what ice chips he could still stomach and then swabbing his chapped lips with a wetted pink sponge.
Forgive me, I have smuggled them away from my father’s house to this sodden pitch in the middle of my life, their names asleep under my tongue. I have walked
Standing in the lobby of the state-of-the-art LEED-certified Sidwell Friends Upper School, staring at a giant tile mosaic of the word stewardship, Curtis Apple was ready for some bullshit.
He lost his religion in church. Twelve years old and Nimi knew there was no God. His mother had left them by then, just like his father, though she had left for a better reason.
Claire was coming over with her boyfriend—her partner—and Joan was baking mince pies in preparation, though she couldn’t remember whether Claire liked mince pies. It was difficult to keep everything straight with four children who changed their [...]
Maybe Cape Cod is fertile ground for existential transformation. Something about the metals in its sandy soil catalyzing metaphysical shifts—I don’t know. All I know is I had my entire worldview rearranged when I was visiting its shores.
Dad, you look like a doll I wouldn’t want to play with, boxed in your casket. The mortician tried to paint you pretty. I wanted to be pretty, too, but mom says makeup is inappropriate for funerals.
Sitting on the concrete steps in the back of my grandma’s house, our dad shows us how to burn paper with a magnifying glass. Says people kill ants this way, how cruel it is. It was true: the magnifying glass’s gaze
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