M.L.

I often feel that with every day a multitude of days come between us, promising that for every hour unspent with you, months will follow. As such, I know you will likely not see me here; we will never cross the Weeks bridge arm-in-arm like Elizabeth and Jane, as two honest people. What’s more, ***’s party made it apparent, I realize you don’t know much of who I am, other than the 12 years we lived together—half of which are lost to the childhood imaginal irreality that confuses dream and waking life. I, however, remember the day you were born. Am I a stranger?

How do you remember me, when I was 18 and you were 12? I don’t wish to be remembered, for even then I was not myself as I am now. Are you yourself? Forgive my questions, I don’t remember how to speak to you. Perhaps then, I will only tell you of the things you will miss as the days breed years.

On Valentine’s Day, I went to the Cemetery with him. I saw your namesake on an oak, (the color, not the alias), it would take you and the two little ones to wrap your arms around it. This Cemetery is bigger than any of ours, bigger than where *** rests—although I don’t remember you attending the funeral. You were certainly old enough. There were several other couples who chose this day to walk with the remembered and unremembered, countless of them, too many to think of. There were willows with branches like nerves hanging down towards the earth. There were weeping angels thrown over headstones. Weep, angels, for sorrow is long dead, the only remnant is your bending, breaking back under stone wings. There were three small round headstones peaking out of the earth like three naked mole children. I couldn’t help but think of you three, always you three. It was much later when I raised my gaze and saw four flat memorials—much older—and thought of us.

I stepped over a yellow chain that declared the path too snowed in, though from my view all the paths were snowed in, and this path went up and over the hill instead of around. He hesitated, of course; I think rules are more factual in his mind. The snow deepened as the hill steepened. It was taller than the ash-tray snow dunes on campus. I knew I had made a mistake. I hopped from bootprint to bootprint in shame. We realized we might have lost the path as our knees started disappearing under virgin snow. We decided to return to the solid concrete shore as fast as possible, and didn’t cross any more neon chains.

The neon chains in daily life don’t mark off hallowed ground, they wear long wool or tweed coats, Blue Bottle in one hand, Ulysses Gabler Edition in the other. They speak in ancient or romantic tongues. They use the most current slang in an absurd performance of normalcy, mixing “cap” and “phrenology” in the same turn of phrase. Sometimes their exaggerated swag reminds me of you. At night they clomp the hallway, with voices both perfectly enunciated and expressing just the right amount of excitement so that every ending ascends. “Wait”s and “like”s plug gaps in conversation like grand punctuated dams. When I hear them, I hear you. I think of your tendency to giggle at the end of every sentence (even when you’re not funny), the way you click your tongue between “like” and “um,” the toothy smile that since you removed your braces forces all your words into half laughter, half song.

For another date we went to a millennial bar in Central Square, also part of Cambridge. Cambridge, like our home, offers all the variety of life you could expect: strip malls, an expensive downtown, and industrial buildings—here they house mRNA, geniuses, and Babka in Kendall. At home, Gaspar’s Linguica factory leads the local industry. The grocery store is still in the part of town we hate being in (too far from home for snacks or a bathroom break) but at Porter’s Star Market no one asks for a complementary piece of Land O’Lakes cheese. Every time, in any grocery store, you three would stand side-by-side in front of the counter, from tallest to shortest. The deli-woman would laugh and slice three pieces, sometimes four, and you’d trade based on supposed size difference or in hopes of getting their cookie after dinner.


We had two beers and two burgers to the tune of Destiny’s Child and Bruno Mars. This was our second time at ***, and my first time seeing the famed seafood tower in person. Comparable to its pop art counterpart that adorned 60% of the one-page menu, its three tiers graced the table of what must’ve been an after-work affair. The party was made up of a shiny bald man with a ginger beard and a blue gingham button-up, a shrew-faced pale brunette woman who was either 22 or 52 depending on how authoritatively or flirtatiously she sipped her cocktail, the back of an afro with auburn streaks and a washed-out denim jacket, and about 10 more people in pairs that lined the table. The darkness of the bar made only their laughing smiles and hand jewelry visible like a shadow-puppet show, light bounced from teeth to bracelets, illuminating the speaker while the others—eating or listening—were dimmed.


In bed I watched a recording from your “Crafty Sticks” video series. Juliet and Cobweb were the singer and dancer, respectively. You were the videographer. I do remember them often being a singer-dancer duo and us being videographers or costume designers for their performances. Perhaps while I was separated by age, and therefore demoted to managerial roles—you were separated by the limelight. You were the sensitive child; prone to breathless bouts of giggling and equally breathless bouts of wailing. Last time I saw you all the softness of your face was replaced with mom’s face and mine. You looked older than I did at that age, prettier with more of mom’s features, including her wide smile, that with your straight teeth belongs on a summer camp brochure.


Before the party, you were stomping around the house complaining about how ugly your outfit was, pausing at every mirror to pull at the hem of your sweater or change the parting of your hair. The rest of the family was running up and down the stairs, grabbing Walgreen’s Christmas earrings, lip glosses, and purses. I thought you looked pretty. In equal parts earnestness and irony, I told you that you looked the same way you always do, and you cried. On the car ride there I thought of the years of Juliet’s “overeating” and Cobweb’s twitching. It felt like the SUV was a pressure cooker, the house a pressure cooker—that we were all marinating in the same etiologically unknown sludge that would some days roll over us like water and others, like oil. That day would be the last time I saw you. I wish I could pull you out of the sludge—but how do you convince a fish they can be out of water?

M.L.

M.L.

Features

Summer 2026

Dear Miranda