“I’ve never met someone like you before,” he said. I returned my best Marilyn Monroe gaze, parting my lips to respond, though nothing came out. My chest fluttered…like a butterfly twitting about in an empty barrel. It’s not that I didn’t know I didn’t feel the same way. I knew…

There have been two times in my life I awoke so refreshed it felt like the tight sear of a jar puckering open. Reborn. The first was swaying gently in a Nantucket harbor on the deck of my father’s wooden boat. My lids raised in the pitch-black September morning, the…

Sometimes I find little gems in the quiet crevices of my mind. I call them gems, but they don’t sparkle. They glare. Glaring epiphanies I’d rather not know. These days, I avoid silence, because I’m afraid of what gems I might find. I don’t want to get quiet enough to…