My father is wise. His wisdom has helped more people than I could ever count. When I was young, I was envious of the so many to whom he lent his ears, of the wisdom he dispensed as if it came naturally. However, when his learning was dispensed to me—it was with frequency as is … More Father’s Day, 2018
INT – A MODEST DWELLING – LATE NIGHT The slim frame of ALEC passes a doorway where a man with grey in his beard sits facing the other direction. BARRY stirs in his chair and calls the figure he hears rustling in the other room to come speak with him. BARRY speaks, inaudibly, to the … More Measurable Time
Requests come in daily. They are from loved ones wanting a rubbing from the Wall. A rubbing of the engraving they have requested be mailed to them. Loved ones who are unable to make the trip to the capitol. Loved ones who will not see their own eyes staring back from the glassy black wall. … More A Mass Engraving
The drives seemed to be endless, those he took with his father. An endless motor hum, and endless drone of rubber on the highway, an endless silence choking the air between driver and passenger. The silence was unbearable. Paul always wondered what was going through the older man’s mind as he sat silent behind the … More Softly-Filtered Wool Sweaters
Boston, March 2015. The garden awakens from a winter deeper than any in recent public memory. The last in a line of four girls seated on the pond’s perimeter screams dramatic fury as winged bodies, en route to plunder the thawing earth, whisk behind her head. “Where do the swan boats go in the winter?” … More In the Absence of Swans
The limp expression on his face was nothing new, but it still tore gently into Monica’s chest each time she looked at her son. With each tear in the fabric of motherhood, she buried the urge to give up, to send him to another doctor, to admit to the nagging suspicion that she might be … More Fodder for Retrospect
After ascending a slew of concrete stairs, you reach this door. Throw your shoulder into it or else you won’t get it open. Once you do, though, you step through this threshold that separates the desolation of the staircase column from a plateau of peacefulness. You could turn to the right and trot into the … More Sixth Floor Paradise
My father was a quiet, weathered man. Ignoring conventional rules you find in writing manuals, it would be accurate to use the old cliché that he was akin to a closed book. He was reclusive, but pensive. He had been places. More accurately, as he used to tell me, places had visited him. He did … More A Cabinet of Coffee Mugs
