We arrived in Geneva on Tuesday morning, twelve hours after very nearly missing our flight from Seattle. Over the last 24 hours, we had gotten married, packed all our belongings into boxes which we then moved into Public Storage, handed over the keys to our house, and packed and prepared for the four-week “Euromoon” that Courtney had been planning for over a year. Of course, some things were bound to slip through the cracks, which ensured a modicum of sleep.
Read MoreAfter Waking
Perhaps the hardest thing about sharing a bed with your sister is the mornings. The way the sun rises crooked through the blinds. How it starts at eye level, straight as an arrow. Gradually tracing your body like a prism. How your mom’s voice sounds when it enters the room, limbs akimbo. A siren, a death knell.
Read MoreFour Blind Men and a Chicken
The three of us had finished eating, but we kept picking at the small dishes in the center of the table – vinegar peanuts, stalks of garlic shoots, julienned carrots – well-past the point of being full, like we would at a restaurant in China.
Read MoreWe Write Our Own Endings
In my dream, I was standing in my pajamas in front of the giant clock in Grand Central. The station was crowded – I don’t think I’ve ever seen it any different – and people were streaming in from all directions: dismal commuters, men with pleated pants, toddlers in strollers, bridge-and-tunnelers clutching aluminum tall-boys. I was a child again and carrying vegetables in my arms, zucchini and artichoke as immaculate and inert as the cornucopia of fruit atop Carmen Miranda’s head. It felt like I was standing at the center of a compass, with paths that forked in every direction – only I couldn’t decide which way I was going. One week had passed since I moved to Seattle, and already I seemed to be moving somewhere else.
Read MoreBlood Bank
It’s quitting time on Friday at the Red Cross. When the boy arrives on his bike, it has stopped raining but the roads outside are still wet. There is a single nurse drawing blood and a burly man by the backdoor stacking blood packets into a cooler. The room is small and, at seventeen, the boy is the youngest person there. Ahead of him are a heavyset man in his 50s, a woman with a sleeve tattoo, and a tall businessman in a suit. All of them look as though they’ve been waiting a long time.
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