Paradox Point

    She Knew           In memory of Sherri Beth Hellerstein Krynski           January 12, 1956 – May 11, 2017   Don’t worry, I’m well enough. So is Hannah. We’re dancing as fast as we can. Little things help: friends, family, hugs. Black humor helps: “Why do skulls grin? Wait and see.” Poetry helps, because it’s an angel, And poetry helps, because it’s a vulture. Best of all, small work helps; The tiny day-to-day routines That sustain the illusion of normality. But Sherri was part of those routines And routines are in calendar time And calendar time is made of paper, But catastrophe time is made of fire.   One small request. Don’t say you’re sorry. Say you’re sad, say you grieve, say you mourn. Me too. But don’t say you’re sorry. You didn’t kill her. Heart failure killed her, triggered by septicemia, Plus diabetes, plus spinal s...

House Kaddish             7/28/2011     It was the logical thing to do. We don’t need that creaky old barn. No-one’s living there. Call it and you’d get Mom’s ghost on the phone machine. Her phone ghost would say “Please leave a message after the beep,” and then beep, and then I’d talk and while talking I’d see the front room with the phone, and the green view through the window screen and the staircase up from the front room, and the staircase down; both staircases were musical instruments, you played them by climbing them and all my childhood, even late at night, in bed, eyes closed I knew who was walking on them by the volume, pitch and tempo of the groaning wood.   It was an old house, and it made sense to sell it. It was too big for any one of us, and too small for the clutter. So we looted the clutter; you get this, I get that, who needs these? We tried to hollow it ...