Category: Non-Fiction

  • Catch Me If You Can 

    Everything seems peaceful and under control. We sit on the floor of our apartment, wooden blocks and toy trucks passing between us as we create projects guided by Aaron’s imagination. A fanciful, even abstract, version of the George Washington Bridge rises from the wooden floor in tribute to the most recognizable landmark of our neighborhood.…

  • Seven Ways to Slake Your Thirst 

    Maybe you’re ten years old and manning a lemonade stand with your best friend. You’re wearing a rectangle-shaped lavender sundress you love that will not fit by next summer, because you’re at that age when growth is suddenly relentless and in all the wrong directions. Did you lug your boom box—one of your prized grown-up possessions—to the corner to liven up the scene, turn…

  • Before/After

    I am ten and there is a barbecue at our house and Dad complains of a headache which is weird because he never complains and goes up to his bedroom to rest which is weird because it’s the middle of the afternoon but he is joking with his friends and he looks happy. The next…

  • Uncanny Eye Candy: The disfiguring of domestic life

    When I was in eighth grade, I spent one afternoon each week with an elderly woman named Raisie who lived a block down from my mother’s house. She paid me to do an unhelpful job of helping her with non-essential tasks. I took a shovel to the weeds in her lush backyard while she supervised…

  • A Spoonful of Loving Knives

    The turtles in the pond have been decaying since I got here. Since before I got here. I wonder how many soulmates each of them have had. If they feel more than pain, fear, and joy. Surely turtles can love, but in the haze of my confusion I recall that rabbits are the ones who…

  • Watching Drew Die

    You stay in the room with him the whole time. You only leave once to pee, and you let yourself linger, praying it’ll all be over by the time you get back. But, of course, it isn’t; it won’t be over for hours. Sometimes you’re alone with him. Most of the time, your father and…

  • Zaftig

    Your mother used to call you zaftig. Yiddish for: a full figured woman. Used mostly for women, though occasionally for men if they are a little chubby. You had long, beautiful brown wavy locks. Gorgeous hair, the women used to say, in their nasally Long Island Italian accents. Hairdressers would pose you for pictures like…

  • The Heart of the Matter

    A wild entry from Helen this morning, positively raging she was and without any preliminaries. From the get-go there was something clearly the matter. Helen had entered the kitchen with her shopping trolley, which she kept inside the main entry door. Ordinarily, when Helen needed to fetch it she came in from her room and…

  • The Leg

    I. This morning a common cellar spider fell into the scalding water of my shower. Already half-lathered by the time I spotted the pitiful creature failing to scramble up the corner of the tub, I hesitated to intervene lest I do more harm than good. Touching the delicate wet body might be like trying to…