• REVERBERATION

    The echo of lovemay have a longer decaythan the moment giving it birth.Ever fainter by desire or spiteit remains limpet-like graspingas if the inexorable fadingcan be stilled by arising memories.Once the bonds are brokenit can remain an artifact, a momentvalued in itself evenwhen the source is no longerpresent or wanted, for itremains woven deeply intothe…


  • BONE CHINA

    Mother loved her bone china.She went out of the way to insurethat her first husband bought a completeset for her, service for twelvenever mind she never had a tablethat could seat more than eightand then only then if you crowdedmismatched chairs together.She gave it to me after her secondmarriage finally dissolved, not onlybecause I was…


  • FAMILY PLOTTING

    I suppose the only thingmy adoptive parentsnever fought overduring the endless divorcewas who would getto be buried in the family plot.The lawyers disposed of iton their behalf and allthat was left to argue overwas the pittance that remainedonce their fees were collected.My birth parents hadno such problems, the onlytime they were togetherwere the momentssurrounding my…


  • ENDING HERE

    I am still not certainhow I ended up hereon the other side of silencewhere words go to slowly die.It was to be foreveruntil severed cruelly by deathbut neither of us diedin manifest ways, justsmall deaths that over timesevered the bonds that still held,a death-borne parting of sorts.It was never a mistakeor an omission of logic,…


  • FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE

    When a marriage comes apartas so many do, it seems,there is always someonewatching from the sidelineswho, while not being asked,offers up an “I knew thiswould happen from the start.”The “I told you so’s” pointingto a moment in the heartof the now doomed marriageare irritating enough, butthe “I knew it’s” are unforgivable.And when it happens so…


  • SADNESS

    He never stopped to take noticethat his anger had given wayto a deep sadness, onehe felt had him trapped, searchingthrough the pain for an exitfrom a place he never imaginedhe would leave willingly.He had promised her a lifetime,a statement he took as a truthnot considering that her promise,whatever it had been, had becomeviolable, the pain…


  • PHOTOGRAPHER

    Photographers we know are struggling,the wedding business has dried up, dessicatedby the years of the pandemic, the tighteningof matrimonial cost belts, no doubt other reasons.Wedding photography is hard on both the coupleand those with fingers on the shutter button.I cannot remember by first wedding, the marriageitself thankfully fading as well with the freedomof time, the…


  • FALLING APART

    In my minds eye, whichfortunately for it cannot hopeto see the mirror, I am sixteen.No, cancel that, at sixteen Iwas still chubby to be kind.So let’s make me 18, evenif I had almost no hair thanksto the U. S. Air Force, but Iwas as fit as I would ever be.No, that won’t work either,for I…


  • INCARNATION

    I had been sitting for an hourin the coffee shop areaof the now gone Borders bookstoretrying to piece together the shardsof a life shattered by the impendingend of a long marriage that wasgoing to last for a lifetime.And I was hoping, perhaps,to meet someone, ready or not,to try and fill the smallest cornerof what was…


  • THIS IS WHAT IT IS

    It happened unexpectedly,but then perhaps it always happensunexpectedly, though in my firstthirty year effort it never fully happenedand its momentary flickerswere no more than quickly fading embers.This time it happened early on,arrived without warning, thentook up residence and broughtwith it a silence where breathsgrew synchronous and words,our stock in trade, were renderedsuperfluous, synapses magically linked.And…