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FOR THE DEPARTED
I have a good friend wholikes to say that divorce isthe worst thing you can experience.He has never married, we allnote, and wonder if it is becauseof a fear of divorce or of failure.Those of us who have beenthrough the sausage mill that ismore than a metaphor for divorcewould tell him that divorceis a return…
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OUT OF HIDING
The hidden joy of youth, and itsinevitable disappointment, isin finding that special person.Each time it is the birth of true love,eventually, save in rare circumstances,it is the death of an illusionand the aching pain accompanying the loss. The certainty of youthful emotionis a bondage that is most often inescapable,and there is no desire to leave…
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COMMON UNDERSTANDING
It didn’t surprise him that hequickly understood the catthey adopted during the pandemicfor all he had to do was applybasic feline logic, that everythingin her new home was eitherhers or theirs collectively,it was just that simple.He had come from a place,a life, where there had beenhers and theirs, simple.When that life ended, as everyonebut him…
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AND COUNTING
How many timeshad they almost metover the years before that evening? What if the Fateshad allowed meetings,what would have changed?Likely everything, nothing,for when they might have metneither was available,he a student imagining himselfalready in love, or both marriednever thinking those relationshipswould possibly end in divorce. And how many times had theybeen in the same placeseparated…
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LISTING
I suppose I shouldmake a list of the thingsI don’t very much like. I’m an optimist so the listwon’t be all that long, thoughit grows the more I think about it. I was going to putmy ex-wife on the listbut she doesn’t like meand I have no feelingsfor her either way. So it’s down toautocrats…
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JACKPOT
I’m not a gambler,never have been, knowingthe house always had the oddsand every play wasa sucker’s bet for sure.I might kill an houron a business tripto Las Vegas going throughfour dollars at the nickel slots,one play for eachoriginal nickel, winningsset aside for rolling. Twenty-one years agotoday I hit the grand jackpotstanding nervously on the stepsof…
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NOT COUNTING
I have had two,although the first is longforgotten, so perhaps itno longer counts, itcertainly didn’t to her,announcing its endlike the conductorof a train running lateon the mainline to sadness. Perhaps I have not forgottenbut all I see is myselfstanding alone, intoningwords to which the crowdintently listens, much likethe audience at a readingby a lesser known…
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FRIENDS
We will always be friends, we said,probably half meaning it at the time.How many times have we said thator somthing akin to it, knowingthat the promise to call, to stayin close touch, was at besthalf meant and almost certainnot to come to any reality. I have a catalog of friends, whoI told I would never…
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THE CHARM
The first one felt right,there was nothing deeper considered,just that feeling that now,I know, anyone might have providedbut then, it was somethingin a world of nothing. The second, really, wascertainly right, for life this time,the wisdom of a single failureenough to ensure success,and when it came apartthirty years later, it wasapparent it was never right,just…
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THEN, NOW
It was easier then, so let’sgo there, the spring of 1970,the location is less important,so long as it’s a coffee housewhere those barely old enoughto drink, or barely short of thatage congregate, waiting forsomething to happen or, Iseriously hoped, someone,someone with little hair, butwho carried James Joyce inhis jeans pocket, Portrait ofthe Artist the only…
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an old writer and his words 