When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde
The Senior Center science class softened my recent widowhood—we read ScienceNews, a weekly magazine filled with mid-level science sophistication. The class offered me structure and companionship.
The medical section was placed after the astronomy update that explained the expanding universe and the ripples in spacetime caused by colliding black holes. We often skipped the ripples and jumped to the human evolution side of history, especially our interactions with our Neanderthal cousins, who ruled the planet for 100,000 years before we nudged them out of existence. Next came the article about a new drug for the treatment of progeria. The story caught my attention, like spotting the first hummingbird of spring kissing my trumpet honeysuckles.…
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I’m not drunk, drunk. Not seeing double, drunk. Not gonna walk in a straight line though. Good thing I’m sitting down. I dunno, it’s been a long weekend. Whose idea was it to go from the bachelor party straight to the wedding? That one’s not on me.
Ow, what just poked me – oh… oh. Oh God, Kyle’s handing me the mic, he’s smiling at me oh my God. I know I’m not the best man but I’d be honored to make a speech. What do I even say? Uh oh, I’m standing up. Here goes nothing…
“Hey, I don’t really have much to say, but Kyle’s been my best friend since middle school and… and I love you man.” People clap. Kyle’s parents are smiling at me. …
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My brother Joe only sees the best of our mother. Whereas I recall her hands flying about my girlish body like angry birds, he recalls her fondly nursing him during his various childhood ailments. He is discomfited by my memories of her because they disrupt the gentle equilibrium he has laboriously structured about our ostensibly shared childhood and the mother who orchestrated it.
My brother ignores the abuses our little brother and I suffered from a petting zoo of perpetrators our mother maintained. She could have protected us, I insist, but she chose not to. Instead he offers the bromidic consolation that “she did the best she could” and he bristles at my retort that “her best wasn’t good enough.” We both agree that the lousy choices she made in life rendered her dependent upon the very men in her life who immiserated all of us.…
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In those first days after your death,
when I couldn’t cry,
there was nothing sadder than things you left behind.
Nothing sadder than the two tea bags of your favorite tea
that I found in a shoe box you carried from home to the office and back,
so much hope embodied in those tea bags – the anticipation
of having a moment between patients to steep a bag in a mug of hot water,
then to take a sip, and pause, and think, and take another sip.
I looked at those little paper bags of tea that your fingers touched,
and imagined you opening the pantry, selecting the tea, placing the bags delicately in the shoe
box, and tenderly carrying the box downstairs to the basement office where you saw patients on
the weekend, caring for their wounds and pains, listening to their stories,
and I felt the great distance between the promise embodied in those tiny bags of tea, and how
they were now left waiting in that sterile box,
all that promise of warmth and comfort gone.…
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The man who was probably hitting on her was more handsome than Lexie first thought, though wildly age-inappropriate. He had a combination of features striking on males of any age, but especially agreeable on the seasoned – prominent brow, deep-set, lively eyes, sharp jaw that shot straight back like the steel bow of a battleship, and a smile both boyish and sophisticated. If twenty, he could be shirtless in a jeans ad but the lines cut by experience and the abrasions of weather edged him toward iconic. He was nicely dressed too, but it was his cool that made Lexie think. He pulsed it like someone called a cool guy all his life, who is used to things coalescing around him as the magnetic center, but doesn’t work hard at it or give it much thought. …
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Steven stepped out of his house onto the porch into the cool morning air. The sun was just coming up and the darkness was receding, giving the neighborhood a blue hue. He put his hands on his hips and stretched back slightly, easing sleep from his muscles. He was a little sore from pickleball the other night, but that’s how he and his buddies stayed in shape at their advanced age.
He took a few casual glances down the street and saw a woman rounding the corner, likely on her morning walk. She didn’t look familiar to him.
As he shuffled down the drive to pick up his newspaper, Steven pulled his phone out of his sweatpants pocket. The woman was slowly making her way closer.…
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I’m going faster than the signs limit, but slower than the other cars barreling through the toll plaza. Before I even see it, a car is right up behind me, that’s how fast they’re going.
As soon as they’re past the concrete divider after the tollbooth, the car darts over to the right to pass me. But the lane to their right merges into their lane and that lane is occupied by a semitruck. The car is caught unaware and has to slam on their brakes. Then the lane now occupied by both the semi and too-fast car pours into my lane. I use this lane every day because the other lanes merge into it. My lane is the safest course through this bonkers toll plaza where everyone is in too much of a hurry.…
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