Articles

Sometimes in the sound and the light / it grows so still / it’s possible to forget / you are moving through the air.

I was so undone—not by Lola’s death but by the prospect of flying halfway around the world again only to turn around to fly halfway around the world again again—that I had to Skype my therapist in New Jersey for guidance. Meantime, Sam was jabbering away in idiomatically perfect Hebrew on his cell phone and telling me to chill out. “Mom, it’s not like we’re being put on the next transport to Poland.”

Night hadn’t brought forth its cache of new stars. / Nor mimosa trees folded their leaves. / She laughed, a bold and sudden laugh

When God calls you / in what voice do you respond?

The glory of the desert is to bless what diminishes

Matter is patient.

Memories—so many people say, “You’ll always have your memories.” But even though my son died almost three years ago, memories of him are almost entirely painful. They are not Wordsworthian “recollections in tranquility,” but sharp stabbing pains that arise out of nowhere.

The absence of growth / a prayer I hold onto and it seems strange / to want something inside to die this much

a dream that repeated: to find the good / you must uproot the pain

Brother Baptiste once asked, How do I fit into my body? Brother Javier survived the plague.