K died the summer before sixth grade. She’d been walking on the side of the road when a car clipped her. Months later, during the short dark days of basketball season, a grown-up would remark, “Pedestrians are supposed to walk opposite the direction of traffic. That way, you see ’em coming.” At the funeral, some of them were already reckoning with this, as if it were a true or false question: You are flirting with death if you choose to walk on the right hand side of the road. True or false. A driver is absolved of wrong-doing if all they can see is the back of your giggling shoulder. True or false. In these summers before they could drive,
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“Your emotional reactivity will get the best of you,” he counseled. This became a daily routine, the multi-vitamin of their relationship. On Monday: “Do you want to let your thoughts and emotions control you?” Then Tuesday: “Your suffering is yet another one of your imaginary narratives. If you can accept it as imaginary, then suffering shall cease.” By Friday: “Unless you want to suffer.” He said all these things with the same blank face he used to negotiate fees for his work, or to tell his mother he loved her at the end of a holiday visit. “You could try meditation and send your thoughts down a river.” He lobbied for passivity and corrected himself, “I mean, observe them flowing
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…

I scan the crowded room for a piece of wood or foam noodle, anything to make a life raft and stay afloat amidst the din. I hear the Christmas music and appreciate it as if it is wallpaper, the farthest layer of sound in the small space, collaged over by pieces and fragments of voices and sound effects. Drinks line the bar, gorgeous jewels in glasses, before—clink, clank—they’re whisked away, smashed one to another, their saturated crystal mouths forced to kiss while the humans laugh. The smells of limes and lemons hover, observing everything like dust. Everyone talks at once, two over three, two over five, a trio in the west, the stars in the east. I hear bits of
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There seems to be some itch to be writing again, and I’ve decided to post first drafts and rough musings if for no other reason than no writer ever does that. And so, begin.