Author Archives: E

but I’m quietly thrilled by it, as this second evening of the year sinks into the season’s coldest night. We take our bikes north on the trail, return traffic on the George Washington Parkway to our left, the Potomac River to the right. My lights are nearly dead, and I’m navigating by the yellow dotted [...]

In the last week of the year, I go running on a path alongside an airfield in Colorado. Early in the morning, the fighter jets pivot and take off. I turn at the mile marker and jog back toward the mountains. On the last night of the year, I’m back in a city, again with [...]

At the top of the stairs, there is a window. Outside, in the evening, tree limbs black on a blue-black sky. I climb the stairs in the dim light from the kitchen, watching the window, watching the trees. He follows, flicks on the hall light, and the window becomes a mirror. All of October was [...]

Less than a mile from the district line, Michigan Avenue lifts into a bridge. I’m on my toes now, running in the sunlight on the narrow sidewalk that slopes upward alongside the concrete barrier. There’s an ugly little tangle of asphalt below, low brick buildings with awnings, the kinds of places where they hammer the [...]

Sunday night, I’m on the Metro, wearing a skirt and studying flashcards in my lap. Up out of the city and into the open air: the moon is low and orange and half-eroded. I get out at the suburban stop, and the train accelerates away above empty backyards. I walk alone from the station, through [...]

Most things are not dangerous, anymore. The Appalachians were once the highest mountains in the world, the jagged seam between this continent and Africa. Now they are rounded, forested: after the rain, you hike through afternoon light all watery and green. In the evening, you pitch a tent on soft ground, hunt for wood in [...]

The backyard is full of trees just now yellowing, and the trees are full of cicadas with abdomens like drums– and even in the morning, in August, the cicadas sing.

In June, there was the precipice. August began with waiting, and then unfurled. One day I was in the old world, walking the yellow bridge, eating stone fruit at the water’s edge, carrying ivory train tickets tucked inside my notebook. Five days later, I was napping in an airport parking lot with my cellphone on [...]

We ate breakfast early, sharing a plate of salted cucumber and cheese and an egg that Andras boiled while I packed my bag. He asked me to read his favorite Graham Greene novel, and I promised, and he asked me to return, and I promised to try. But you may be in Israel by then, [...]

Today was like autumn, Andras said, cool and dark and damp. We took the old metro through the city, standing together by the doors, speaking above the noise of the rattling carriage. In the synagogue, I looked up through the blue stained glass and looked out into the burial garden, and Andras talked about what [...]