He said maybe irony is the lens through which we see the picture in reverse
You had a certain way of saying my name. It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life.
THERE WAS A YOUNG MAN WHO HAD ARRIVED AT the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing at you as not. He began showing up in Bill’s studio and started to paint. Bill watched...
I used to lie in a lover's arms getting a stiff neck, or needing to scratch my nose, or losing all sensation in my arm, unwilling to move lest the man find out I wasn't comfortable in his embrace...Wo...
What is this longing, she will want to ask. This troubling feeling of more to come. You can make something out of it, I want to tell her. But that's what her life is for.
It’s easy to find that five or six hours have sped by without my noticing. I am having fun. This is not my world, these are not my fears. is great storytelling, and it is not my story.
I tried not to think of this as an omen, but unwelcome thoughts enter my head all the time.
The last several years my life had begun to feel shapeless, like underwear with the elastic gone, the days down around my ankles.
Looks as if I have an open umbrella concealed under my skirt. How did that happen?
Tirade Against He Passed Away You never hear it said, He is passing away. It is always a fait accompli. He passed. How I hate it. As if the body had nothing to do with it, as if the body hadn’t even b...
SIX MONTHS AGO A FRIEND WAS ANGRY WITH ME and I with her. I had written about something someone said many years ago, but it was she who heard the words, not me, a fact I had completely forgotten. Her...
My definition of fear is that it's a constant companion, a sidekick, riding you like a watch, going in and out of the days. I don't live like that anymore. The fact that I'm sixty-three has something...
I have been trying to remember being young, which is hard because I don’t feel old until I try to get up from my chair. Or when I look at the photograph Jennifer took of me sitting on a stool next to...
I had always wanted to write but thought you needed a degree, or membership in a club nobody had asked me to join. I thought God had to touch you on the forehead, I thought you needed to have somethin...
Happy, for instance, once meant luck. Not good luck or bad, just luck. Look what we have done to ourselves. We think we can actually pursue happiness.
Grief is not a pleasure, but it makes me remember, and I am grateful.
For better or for worse, but not for lunch,...
But we're all looking for the place we belong. And what is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Maybe there isn't any it, as my friend said, only the longing
Being cautious is new territory; my specialty was leaping, not looking. These days I pay attention. You can stumble uphill as easily as down. Ice comes in smooth and corrugated. Plastic bags are slipp...
I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now.