“Lush” and “Do You Like What I Was When It Was Already Was?”

Shut the window to the garden! / When the paper blinds you had / crinkled just so, not enough to keep light / out or us— / When the blinds folded as accordions / were replaced— / Not the cold room, chill in summer from / constant air… / Not the empty apartment sans couch, / us long on the rug your mother mailed / by the cardboard table you painstakingly / constructed when you looked at me / and whispered / my middle name… / We’re czars, you said, Nicholas and Katherine.

Daddy’s Favorite: A Short Story About Siblings and Deception

Sean was ten when it happened. It was a memory that he swallowed. Instead of passing through him, it became another heart. It was there, alert and active, with him always. He thought this obsession, his acceptance of his father’s worst moment along with his commitment to remembering it, was proof he loved Daddy most. Julia was appalled when Sean told her that theory one drunken Memorial Day. It had been a long and lazy weekend, so unlike how they usually spent their time. Sean had gotten too comfortable. Immediately after he spoke, he regretted it. Julia, it was apparent, had not kept the memory close. Instead, she had ejected it from her body like vomit, expelling all traces.

Summer’s Gone: On Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo

It’s not a book for summer. Despite the yellow checkered cover, Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, which came out in September, is most certainly a winter book. The yellow is wrong anyway, not the yellow of sun, but instead tinged with a sickness, the checkered pattern alternating between subdued yellow and gray. Like a jaundiced hue, the cover blends in with the orange and marigold seats on the subway, configuration and color of a D train about to be defunct. Shortly after Intermezzo came out, my ex bought me a copy at Target. It was from the Brooklyn Target in Caesar’s Bay with a view of Coney Island on one side and the Verrazzano on the other.