I am restless and nomadic, fidgety and vagarious. My sister is my float in this river that pushes me towards a bank or a wall. I rest on her. Each year, we take a sister trip, like our Hanna Sister Spectacular Summer S-cape (to Cairo) and alliteration-free sojourns to Anchorage and Antwerp, all the way out to Valparaíso and Zierikzee.
Fear Some
Step by step, I followed the chubby two-year-old legs up the loft ladder. Her father belayed her climb clutching her firmly, as we tested how far she’d go, how high up fear waited for her. She’d spent the better part of an hour circling back to the foot of the ladder to plant her black sparkly shoes on its first
Home Sweet & Sour Home
I carry on several romances outside my marriage. One with cheese-fries, another with shoes, one more with houses I can’t afford. I idle often with these lovers. The most unrequited, however, is my emotional abandon to Nice, France. She is my preferred mistress, someone I cannot have a life with but allow to consume me. More reckless admirers have left
Hold Back the River
Few friends hold back the river with a leisurely dinner or coffee break. A buoyed pause midday, midweek, mid-month, just before or after blisters of anxiety and insecurity tremble to pop in lonely water. Somehow, we find ourselves downriver together. We get there separately, most often rafting down different rivers altogether, intersecting for a moment long enough to see clarity
Hipster
For far longer than good judgment allowed, I wanted to be a professional belly dancer.
Eva’s Apple
My mother, Eva, is remarkably beautiful, but I am not. According to some people, that makes me a complete failure. I’m comforted by the fact that those people are idiots. They see nothing else of her, barring any possibility that I resemble her in some other way, perhaps even a better way. But my mother is much more than her