SELECTED WRITING

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“The young will do what they do, leaving the sheltering canopy and turning their faces to the sun like a field of swaying poppies, and my reminder will wisp like last night’s dreams."

“I’m like one of those heavy-lidded dogs playing poker at a round table in the paintings by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, pretending it’s normal for me to be here, doing this. Is it? According to whom?"

"...how can A.I. speak for me? How can it speak for any of us, each with our singular experiences whispering in our ears and shaping our thoughts everywhere we go, a lens that scatters our vision like the prism on the album cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon."

"Theory of Creativity: I’m resourceful because my parents didn’t have the money or inclination to buy toys when we were children. Props for our games consisted mainly of pencils, paper, snow, rocks, and sticks. This makes it sound as if we were Amish, but we weren’t. We were just regular Protestants."

"For if one purpose of writing is to cast new light on shared experiences, then caregivers who read—all sixty-three million of us in the United States who are living with kids under the age of eighteen—need caregivers who write."

"My own weights rattle dully like gastroliths at the bottom of a glass jar."

"That the world might notice the frayed threads at her thigh, and what if clothes still speak even when we don’t think they should. What then."

"Her hand brushed against my back, and it sounded like a grass broom against a worn, wooden floor."

"But rather the almost invisible color of high cirrus clouds feathering the last rays of the sun, the secret twist of the conch washed ashore then back out to sea with the tide."

"Somewhere on this canvas of brooding green, coral, and black hide my sister’s small fingerprints. Her imprints recollect the viscosity of the oil paint, how it beckoned."

"In so many ways, we are discouraged from bridging the space between one another, and it breaks my heart."

"We sit alone in a room, talking to no one, getting up for no one, responding to no one, and we read and write and send emails and remember who we were before we were told to shelter in place five weeks ago."