I have found the notes you hide. The first—not of your notes but of the ones I found—was stuffed in the window of a city bus. I saw it was a page from a larger work, numbered 27 and beginning in the middle of a conversation. I liked that message. Don’t we all meet in [...]
I want to live in a world where pearls cannot be sold or traded, only given; cannot be formed or manufactured, only discovered. I want us to forswear jewelry stores and aquaculture, to dive for treasure without wetsuits or scuba tanks. I have been training to hold my breath. The pearl I am saving was [...]
I don’t have a plan in the world. I have the wide open sky and a bag of dried mangoes. My last girlfriend called them slices of sunshine. I have kept the phrases my friends and I made up. A teenager is “a case of ginger ale”, empty praise from the human resources director is [...]
When the markets began to crash, I thought they’d bottom soon. I bet on a rebound that never came. My pulse raced at the financial news, the win so tangible, the loss so unthinkable. Now, they say that hope has strength, but I can tell you, it does not have effect. Every day, another one [...]
I have attached love notes to helium balloons, sent them into the sky. Folded into paper airplanes, they will find their way somewhere. I am a realist, and I know the messages will not carry the weight of their burst carriers. But where they land, it will at least look like they did. Too many [...]
Yesterday I got rid of all my old photos, my old letters and emails, my old trinkets and souvenirs. Isn’t all nostalgia false? As I scrubbed, I examined these things, things for years I had saved like treasure. I am glad I remember the truth. These were not honest records, let alone mature or expansive [...]
I came to the aquarium as I always do, when it is quiet. The crowds come for feeding time. They are chasing the agitation, the water filled with bubbles, the frenzy of desire. I come for something else, to watch the creatures swim slow loops or float, hide in their pretend reefs and wait. That [...]
The first series are pictures of me looking for this camera—on the table where I had left it for just a moment, on the other chairs, underneath, and apparently into the sky, as if it could have leapt onto the awning of the café or been stolen by a pigeon. These photos were taken from [...]
I heard that 100,000 people pass through my stop on the metro every day. Numbers like this keep me up at night; I have a problem with the sheer scale of things, I am easily bewildered. Just last night, I stayed up counting. I wanted to put myself in perspective, measure that number out in [...]
In the place I want to find, the fall never ends. A paper airplane, once it reaches the top of its arc, descends forever. A drink, once spilled, spills toward the ground forever. The leaves, when they drop, float slower and slower until they seem still. Every time there is a kiss, a green leaf [...]
