First off, LOVE. Over the years, I’ve told a handful of men that I loved them and when I said it, I meant it. I loved them in the way I knew at the time, and I identified being in love by the flood of feelings I experienced: attraction, excitement, affection…

At three months old, my mother placed me in a Moses basket on the floorboard of an old car and my parents drove north from a small town in north Florida to Chicago. It was the seventies, before car seats, and my family was following my father’s military training orders…

There’s nothing quite as frustrating as receiving mixed messages in relationships. It can be hot then cold, yes then no, full steam ahead and then full stop, or more subtle. Perhaps the mixed message shows up as a partner being attentive when you’re together and then silent when you’re apart…

Along with American individuality and idealism comes the notion that choosing oneself is righteous. It’s viewed as something to celebrate, like a victory, and as a choice that we should be proud of. While we may ultimately know that the hard choice is for the best, the fallout from choosing…

I know the path and the path knows me: every tree root and divot to every breath and footfall. I move slow, though I feel fast. My presence, a quiet surprise to those I pass, while my heartbeat barrels like a locomotive through the gallery of wounds known as my…

There were some things I thought were all wrong until they turned out right. There were parts of myself I thought were broken until I saw how they’d been made stronger. There were times when I thought I’d become all that I could, and then I became more. There were…

They will assassinate the building and collapse the cruise ship. The politician is a toothpick or a primate or a shoelace, and we’re a democracy or an oligarchy or a mutiny. It was tourists or terrorists, an insurrection or a holiday romp. Good times. Never mind, he was murdered for…

The picnic table was wet from a slow and steady rain, but we ate our dinner there anyway: cold fried chicken and coleslaw on paper plates. The campground was full; our tent site, though booked at the last minute, was the best in the park, surrounded as it was by…

Ernie knew Liz would screw a bargain out of him if he let her, but he never budges on price. Not even for her, the pretty mystic who pulled him down behind the counter of her gift shop without even locking the door late one afternoon. Each delivery Ernie makes…