write one

I’m 16 years old. I’m at a party in somebody’s basement, a room decorated to resemble a cave. There are black lights and black light posters and a leather futon with matching leather chairs. Kids mill around, passing a smuggled bottle of vodka between them to pour into their sodas. A boy I like, a boy who just moved here from Canada and has the…

My first husband was addicted to gambling. My brother-n-law, to pills and heroin. My current husband is a recovering alcoholic. Though none of my experience with addiction is of a first-person nature, I have been dealing with it on and off for the past 30 years. I watched as addiction ravaged the lives of people I love and the people who love them.

Some mornings it’s easy. I take the medications bleary-eyed, without thinking too much about it. But some days, like today, I hesitate. I hold the tiny pills in my hand — one…

You were always weird but I never had to hold you
By the edges, like I do now

hockey and hope

hockey and hope

It was 55 degrees outside when I walked the dog this morning. It was 5am and…

There’s a picture of us somewhere, unless I tore it up already. In this photo we’re dressed up — I’m pretty sure it was my daughter’s sweet sixteen — and he’s leaning over, whispering something in my ear and to the outside world, to people other than us, it’s an endearing picture, one in which they imagine he is softly, gently, telling me something…

yellow

Just as Matthew could hear the tires of the pick up truck nearing the house, his mother shooed him into the shed and told him to watch from…

it’s 3am i must be crazy

A list of things I think about at 3am:

to sleep, perchance to dream

I am submerged. I am gasping for air, reaching, trying to propel myself up. This time it is water. Other…