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“Have you ever had a job before?” Harry stuck his hand out to me, and I shook it. I was pretty sure he didn’t mean the astronomy internship I’d had looking at exoplanets with other teenagers for a fixed stipend. “Yes,” I lied. He was tall, with a weather-beaten face and sparse white hair, swaying like the deciduous forests that [...]
It was January 2022, almost a year since my breakup. The air was chilly and filled with Omicron. I'd reached my limit of stoical solitude and turned to OkCupid. My profile, I hoped, would present as light, clear, and open. I used phrases like, "Bundling up and dining outdoors these days." Read: I'm risk-averse but adaptable. Read deeper: I'm self-protective [...]
What is it about anniversaries? Is it that the earth is again in the same place relative to the sun, and that we are occupying the same spot in the cosmos? You were here, but differently. Something has changed from when you were at this position before: you got married; planes hit the twin towers; you stopped smoking. The sameness [...]
A cemetery was never a place I imagined myself doing squats. But in late March, when New York City shut down gyms and public parks and braced itself for a deadly COVID-19 outbreak, I found myself at the gates of Evergreens Cemetery in Queens, sporting black leggings and a pink hoodie, ready to sweat. Like many New Yorkers, I had [...]
