I’d packed my sadness, despite its enormous size. Each day I lugged it down to the beach with my towel and beach chair and sunglasses and paperback and sunblock and water bottle.
The question I keep asking myself as I write this book, the question I keep insisting upon, is this: How can this story—this experience—be useful to anyone other than me? How can I make this material into a tool you can use?
To talk back to myself: experience is instructive. People make connecti…
[...] meanwhile, what would I be doing for work? Reading poems, teaching workshops, going to dinners, giving talks, being interviewed in front of an audience? Maybe for business it sure sounded a lot like pleasure?
Once, while I was at a literary festival in Spokane, my husband called from Ohio:…
Here’s the thing: Betrayal is neat. It absolves you from having to think about your own failures, the ways you didn’t show up for your partner, the harm you might have done.
Betrayal is neat because no matter what else happened—if you argued about work or the kids, if you lacked intimacy, if you…
I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark
morning streets, I point and name.
Look, the sycamores, their mottled,
paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves
rusting and crisping at the edges.
I walk through Schiller Park with you
on my chest. Stars smolder well
into daylight. Look…
