1. One of us thinks too little about weight. One of us thinks too much. She is all angles, like the drawings of women in pattern catalogs at the fabric store. I am all rounded: my chin, my stomach, my upper arms like still life paintings of plump, ripe fruit.

We are everywhere, the middle-aged, aging daughters and sons. Watch us folding walkers and wheelchairs into trunks, and then unfolding them again in handicapped spaces or next to sidewalk cutouts

I could only love you the same way our mother loved chicken feet.

We weren’t rich, but our grandparents raised chickens and mother could make one bird go a long way for a family of four …

Isn’t good old-fashioned grief enough? Loss, tears, the flooding of memories?

C-sharp (#): Compositions in a minor scale, such as Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata in C# Minor,” can evoke a misty evening of sad contemplation, moody ruminations, even grief.

The only picture I’d ever seen of my maternal grandmother was her wedding portrait. Its muted hues, her close-lipped...

A product of the fifties, I grew up with Donna Reed, Pat Boone, and the most daring heartthrob of all, Elvis Presley. So when my fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Lia, said to me, “Grandma, I’m not a girl,” I felt the wind ravel right out of my lungs.

Blood draws have been hard on me my whole life. The medical techs tell me my veins are small. Sometimes they resort to a pediatric needle…

CW: sexual violence 

The man who settled himself between my legs was twice my size. I immediately felt suffocated beneath the pressure of his weight …