Essays, nonfiction, and short fiction.
Bubbe’s Shaynekeit
Eli shook the wooden box. Each dull thump vibrated soundlessly into his fingertips, and it grew warmer with each impact. It had severe half-blind dovetail joinery but was accented with three iron nails on all four corners. Eli rubbed his thumbs over the nails, cold in contrast with the warm wood. The iron mortised lock wasn’t originally part of the box. It was hammered in with claw-like nails bent inward around the edges that dug into the box. Above the keyhole, carved and painted red, was אגלא.
Update
I woke up this morning and realized it’s been over a year since the “big move” to the burbs in New Jersey and all the miniscule details that went into making it possible. One whole year? Am I remembering this correctly? If you asked me earlier in the week I would have hesitated, made a snide “father time sleeping on the job” kind of joke, and told you it felt like 3 months versus the one whole calendar year that has actually passed.
MISTER GEORGE
Marta bends down to scrutinize the rubbish at her feet. From a distance, the Box Tops for Education look like an exploded piñata stuffed into a shoe box. Up close, each one is evenly cut with a faded yellow and blue boarder. Mister George asked her not to throw them away. He’s been saving them for the Forest Hill Elementary fundraiser and every cent counts. Oona, his oldest daughter, hasn’t gone to the school in decades and her own children go to Dwight-Englewood Academy, an expensive private school north of their grandfather’s house. Marta empties the shoebox into an extra large Ziplock bag and sets it aside.
Amanecer
Sentimentality and a predilection towards mysticism is common with the women of my family. In my teens my aunt took me to her bruha, a short dark haired woman who could tell my fortune by charting the arrangement of stars on the day I was born. It felt silly, but Tia was in earnest. It was her way of ensuring I was prepared for what lay ahead.
Yes All Women
My sense of self has been tempered by the men in my life, each carrying a personal hurt so deep my love couldn’t reach them. Whether it was failed dreams or lack of gumption it fell upon me like hot bile. Suddenly what they failed to see in themselves I suffered in tandem. I wasn’t allowed to exceed their limitations and my affection for them was supposed to be inexhaustible.
Limbo
Summer is brief and oppressive. The ceiling of my barracks room gives the illusion of ventilation with pronounced plastic slits grouped together next to a larger unit, drab gray and ineffective. I have a box fan propped against the screen pointed inward toward my bed, a gentle hum that rolls my green blackout curtains. People around me are convinced winter will be especially harsh this year, but I’m impatient.
The Root of the Matter
The day I graduated from Saint Edward's University was dolorous: I wanted to wear jeans, but was hastily zipped into a modest black dress and matching heels, half-size too big. I wanted to go to my favorite diner on the East Side, but took three steps inside before I was reproached for not making reservations somewhere expensive. The missing tiled bar and barefoot children stopped them at the door.