Could Americans Embrace a Single President? — Yesterday, I awoke to the familiar vibrating of a CNN notification on my phone. I rolled over to look and read that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he and his wife of 18 years were legally separating. …

She was us. — With Sinéad O’Connor’s death, another layer of grief settled into the nooks and crannies of my aging spirit. There was no surprise in it. I’d held a bit of space, expecting this news eventually—in the same way I had held space for the death of my ex-husband. An uneasy anticipation…

The vault of a high school English teacher — I have been teaching for 16 years. This year, as I sat in the back of a Baptist church in Detroit at a funeral for a student’s mother, I thought about all the tragedies I have witnessed as a teacher. This Pastor invited my student to wail as the congregation…

Oh, to be that guy… the one with broad shoulders that keeps secrets well and processes feelings with calloused hands, through shooting baskets, or hammering nails, or shredding on a fender strat, rather than through endlessly spilling these useless words on page after page, or into the well-worn ears of tired friends…

I want to experience it all. I don’t want to miss a thing. — When Robert Frost talked about those two roads diverging, my first thought was, “Do I have to choose? Can’t I check out both?” Decision-making always provoked anxiety in me. As a teenager shopping for school clothes, I exhausted my mother, dragging her through every possible store, stressing out about how…

Your presence has awakened something in me. Contrary to the story I was telling myself, I have learned that I Still Long to be loved. Even if you will shed this connection as easily as you shed your wool-lined coat, your care reminds me what it feels like to be cared for… reminds me what I’ve…

This house Smells like firewood and freedom reminds me of the year I Reclaimed my soul From the pinched face bleach blonde mean-girl boaters who love America and hate immigrants except for their Nona. …

A piece about emerging from a time of hibernation — This bass reminds me of a shape I once took and this guitar of that time I believed you were magic. …

You said I must be a witch but It was you, running your warm hands across my sternum, pressing my small wrists between your thumbs, that put a spell on me. I thought you were a good decision. Instead of guitar strings, your fingers pressed computer keys; eyes scanning black and white…