The steel guardrail familiar against his knees. The straight, level bridge concealing its loftiness, the gorge below indistinct in the moonlight. [CW: suicidal ideation]

I was swinging ever higher on the swing mounted on a sturdy branch of the immeasurably ancient oak. And then I was on the ground …

In the picture, photographed in Burma, my grandmother is seated on the traditional teak chair in the veranda and my grandfather stands behind her in the shadows thrown by a padauk tree …

Walking the shoreline, I observe how the wind behaves—like a relentless, fussy mother, scouring footprints, scrubbing the sand smooth, only to have the tide return …