I didn’t know Margaret had a best friend. I’d known for a while that big events pull people out of crevices. I found myself worried about people showing up who hadn’t known her, not really, reaching out to leach off of the pain. There’s something about hubbub that functions like fire, that turns people into… Read More Emblem of Our House: Friends
The anxiety crawled up my throat from my stomach. People were looking at her on the train. He wasn’t her baby, and she was only 12. I knew there was no way that the baby was hers, of course, but she was young, and she was looking at him with tenderness and wearing him in… Read More Emblem of Our House: Family
The shock hits first; the grief, second. The shock I could handle. I’d experienced that before. Adrenaline was easy once there are pre-programmed responses, once a body has experienced a situation a few times. Hitting the waves isn’t too bad after that. I took care of my responsibilities, contacting the people who needed to know… Read More Emblem of Our House: Villain
Nothing bad happens when I’m making art. I was a dancer first, at age 3, enrolled at a studio in Brooklyn. I danced until I was 11. By then, we’d lived in Pennsylvania for two years. I studied ballet, jazz, and tap. We’d been working really hard on recital pieces when Schlep learned that the… Read More Emblem of Our House: Art
The morning she died, I was tired. I woke up late that day. I didn’t have to go to the farm. I had Reggie, a small Yorkie I was dogsitting. I had a dentist appointment that afternoon. I’d finally gotten financially to a point where I could afford to go every six months. I went… Read More Emblem of Our House: Gone
I’d been working a temp assignment at an association since June as a communications director. It had felt, originally, like a dream job. I had a quarterly publication, social media, marketing, writing, editing, and design work to do. I was scheduled to head to a major city this Wednesday for a conference, and I was planning to see a couple of friends I haven’t seen in four years.
And then things started to shift at the association. I would spend hours on a design, only to be told that “Sorry, I just don’t like it,” without any additional direction. I was told fonts had to be the same size across a design, even for different sections. And I was told that designs I created, that were based on decisions made without my input, were simply not good enough. … Read More an association