Her mouth was sour; her forehead was still damp with perspiration. She leaned against the bathroom wall and noted her complexion had gone pale. She wanted to slide down the wall and rest until she felt steadier, but…

The box thuds at your feet: mug, plant, wedding photo, the 25-year pen.

I didn’t question any of it and instead sat motionless as she dropped my wrists and walked away seconds later.

The separation—the plan—had been a long time coming. After years of fighting and therapy and apologizing and, finally, silence, their marriage was about to die of exhaustion.

Sitting near her desk, like a dunce cap, red

As a boy I fished under the Tappan Zee bridge which spans the Hudson River above New York City.

Hurried, hassling suit in front of me is being awful to the barista. So she refuses to serve him, turning away.

The next thing we knew, the KGB started tailing us everywhere we went. They must have heard about Lenin’s Paintings, was all we could figure. Because, what if they were real? That night we went out to a pizza place where we saw the worst graffiti in t

There's this sepia-toned photograph, which my mother gave me, of my brother and me when we were still both youngsters. In the picture my brother's dressed in a skimpy checked suit whose sleeves were already too short for him — on its way to becoming my

stole

I / go my / way alone

the steady, persistent work of beauty

All were part of the household of Court Astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) who lost his nose in a duel as a student and went through life thereafter wearing a gold prosthetic one instead and who met and fell in love with a commoner who bore him eigh

‘Miguel! A pint of Guinness, please!' I might as well have asked for his mother's immortal soul. A smile as benign as a stiletto. But he served a clean and tidy pint.

...the loving and very painful hurt of our daily sustenance