When she spotted something grotesque in the scenery, like a flattened raccoon or a trucker working a finger intensely in one nostril, she would point and say, "That's your boyfriend." Eventually, she ran out of things to point to outside the car, so she pointed to the fleshy birthmark on the back of our father's neck and said, "That's your boyfriend."

My summers in Vermont at the meditation center are the best three months of my life. So much better than sixth grade and my single mother and the California summer heat that smells like asphalt.

The score is ten-nothing. I am up but the game hasn't started yet. Brian gives me a ten-point handicap for a game to eleven. I start with the ball and try to dribble toward the basket but falter. Brian picks it up and shoots for a score. Ten-one.

I have just lifted the sandwich for my first bite of food in twenty-four hours when I see her....It's my sister. There, across the street, almost halfway down the block, walking east, a purse strap slashed across her back, that loping awkward gait in flat shoes that scuff the sidewalk with each step.

spring supplement

There were seventeen, he said. Tattoos, that is. Seventeen. It is the number of the star. Hope. And God knows if a fool needs anything, it's hope.