Dear Tom,
When we met all those years ago in Belize, we were doing the Lord’s work, though few of us in that outfit were people of faith. We were working in the Lord’s vineyards and also drinking in the vineyards and having love affairs in the vineyards and generally thinking too highly of ourselves in the vineyards and away from the vineyards.

At eight thirty on a Tuesday morning, without warning, my love for Esme was evicted by her landlord.
I first met Esme at an outdoor wine bar in Bed-Stuy. A surprising chill had settled that summer night. From the far end of the backyard, my eyes glanced over my untouched glass of white wine, tracing the path of two intersecting string lights, until I saw her

When I was very young, I went with my mother to a boutique in Short Hills, New Jersey, where she purchased two or three dresses. As I think back, there is one I thought of as special. I can still picture her wearing it. If I remember accurately, it was multicolored in soft blue and silver two-inch metallic squares, stitched together.

The black sequin jacket was heavy, which I wasn’t expecting, maybe because I’d only seen sequins on television, on long dresses that sparkled under spotlights, like on the Judy Garland Show. Our jackets had broad satin lapels and tails that reached past the backs of our knees

Catherine lives in a unit, surrounded by other Mercy nuns. I meander through the rose garden to reach her front door. One of the neighbouring nuns is pruning a rose bush in their shared garden. Above, the blue sky is streaked with white clouds.

After your world ends, she asks you if you want to disappear. All I want is to disappear, you say. Let me buy your ticket, she says. You don’t let her. You buy your own ticket. No. Your dad buys it for you. He’s worried. He wants to help, somehow.

We are the best of friends who, but for the whim of fate, might never have met. I would like to say that we grew up together, but that would only be the truth if we started growing up after our fiftieth birthdays

They are like yellow eyes staring from the buttered skillet. Their centers are slightly runny, their whites sizzle softly, and they never stick to the pan.
There is no question of how she would prepare them.

It’s funny because the crystal is pretty. Quite pretty. So, when I stumble across it, nestled in the carpet at the top of the stairs, my first thought is of its beauty. It is white and very clear. Sharp edges. It could have been a sugar crystal. Or it could have been a crystal grown with a kit like the one he got for his birthday when he was little. It had that look. But of course, it’s not that kind of crystal.

He wakes within subways. I rise from bed. Damp floors soil his soles. Rugs ease mine. I pick and choose among possessions for what I’ll need today: a notebook, pen and wallet in a parka’s leftward pocket with my cellphone on the right. A crunched recycled shopping bag for groceries curls in my black cloth glove. All that he’s assembled along his arduous life’s journey stuff a wire shopping cart from which his duck’s gait grows.

The final days with my mother were interesting. “Interesting” has become an interesting word to me. It’s almost always said as a polite way of saying “bad” or “not for me.” The day-to-day visits with my mother were rarely the same. Some fine. Some difficult. Always, in a good sense, interesting.

It is 7 o’clock in the morning, as usual. On my desk, piles of books and notepads are scattered around the spot where my breakfast—a cup of coffee and a piece of toast topped with a sunny-side-up egg—sits. I’m reading a page from Haruki Murakami’s story “The Wind Cave” in The New Yorker, while Taiwanese pop songs play softly on the computer.

The doctors had given us no reason to expect the baby early — so on August 2nd, 2024, I followed my normal post-dinner routine. I washed the dishes. I fed the fish. And then I sat at my desk to compose the next day’s plan…

Father Maurice lives alone on a quiet street where early twentieth-century cottages sit tucked behind white picket fences. A statue of a Cambodian King sits on the living room windowsill, gazing towards us with an expression that is hard to read: it could be serenity, it could be aloofness.

We made the London West End theatre reservation last year in 2023. As soon as we knew we’d be flying to NYC in Spring 2024 and taking a transatlantic cruise to Iceland and then onto Europe, we had booked the play in London’s West End, A Long Day’s Journey into Night.

If time could fly backwards instead of forwards, could I love you in reverse?
In the beginning, a farewell. Two lovers say goodbye. An embrace begins to loosen before letting go. Hands that clasped tightly together, slowly slip apart; a space opens between palms, fingers are no longer entwined.
The attraction that once drew us together turns into a force pushing us apart.

I feel as hollow as the empty black circle staring at me from the screen. The nurse practitioner is quiet as she scans my uterus. A push to the left, a push to the right. Left, right, left, right. I gaze at the monitor, searching for what I’ve waited seven weeks to see: a white blob floating in a black ovoid sea, outlined by a bright white line.
Left, right, left, right. Back and forth, the cold probe pushes against my insides. The empty black circle keeps coming in and out of view. Nothing else.

Sometime around 1912, twenty-two-year-old Great Aunt Annie took a photo of Mayme and Beth, two of her younger sisters, standing on opposite sides of an unnamed friend. They were all eating apples at the same time. Annie framed the scene with her camera then snapped the photo, capturing their impish goofiness on black-and-white film. The smiles hidden by the apples show in their eyes.
Ninety years later, in February 2002, I was hiking with my three daughters,

Nestled in the Adelaide Hills, Father John’s home is warm and inviting. Outside, the trees are dampened by the winter rains. The sky is dark although it is only midday. John sits in a blue armchair by the heater. Green plants surround us in the living room where we sit.

“We have no Rick Smith.” “What do you mean? I was told they brought him here.” “I’m sorry.” The [triage nurse’s] annoyance was unmistakable. I had no recourse but to wait. I’d received a call about fifteen minutes ago. My husband was found by the maintenance man outside, face down on the ground.

My car twists and curves as the city lights disappear behind me and my headlights spool deep into the dark abyss toward my rural home. I feel relieved I don’t have to face Dad tonight. I’m waiting until morning to break the news of Mom’s death to him.

We were already deep in the Amazonian rainforest, in the borderland between Peru and Brazil, based in a camp somewhere along an unnamed tributary of another tributary of the Rio Javari that marks the border, and that morning we rose early to travel by canoe yet deeper into the forest. Local hunter Alejandro had encountered a large adult anaconda and was willing to take us there.

After 24 years of being a nun, Juliette (name changed) left the convent. It was 1986. Juliette’s spiritual longing – unsatiated by the convent – was as strong as ever. So three years later, when she met Brendan, a charming, charismatic, striking man who ran spiritual workshops drawing on the wisdom of the world’s greatest traditions, she took notice.

It took me three years to read your letter. Back in 2018, when I didn’t really understand the process, I thought ‘pen sketch’ meant an artist’s drawing of the sperm donor. I didn’t look at it as I didn’t want to see you. Not then. I didn’t want to choose a donor based on looks and I didn’t want to identify a stranger on the faces of my prospective children. Later, when I joined groups for donor assisted families, I discovered – by chance when reading a Facebook post – that the so called ‘pen sketch’ was not a picture, it was a letter.