Today I leave my writing and communications job at Cornell University in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Over six years, I wrote more than 140 editorials, countless tag lines and stand firsts, and scouted the internet for media mentions of college faculty, students, and staff. I learned so much about communications writing at this job. It really upped my game. My favorite piece written for the college was about Architecture and Engineering professor Donald P. Greenberg, a major figure in the history of computer graphics and 3D rendering.

This week, I watched The Beatles: Get Back. The film shows that The Beatles were near the end of their arc as a band. It’s clear without knowing the future. So, an end, but also a beginning, and a continuation. That period was the start of George’s solo artistic arc…

Maybe he could be allowed back in the human race — maybe he belonged there after all. — Robert was in the truck again, driving to another little town looking for Smith, as he’d done almost every night since he and Cynthia found the things in Maylin’s room. Despite the horror and certainty that Smith had planned to get to their little girl almost from the start, Robert…

Vertical Girl | Horizontal Girl — Dead Inside Girl / — The sewing needle had its own hole through the leather of her wallet, like a prowler’s tool that unlocked her skin. It came from her mother’s pincushion, a stalk among the steel Cyclopes. But she had another use for it. Maylin lay in Smith’s musty bed, occasionally flicking the ants…

A poem — It was many years before I got it — how to properly button the duvet cover so the buttons hid inside, how it was done with right sides together. I let the hem gape, the comforter drool at the foot of the bed. When I blocked his view of the TV, my father used to say “You make a better door than a window.” I thought, why is it better to be a window? And what is a better door? Should I be that or a better window?

Forgiveness was a process, not a place. Part of her was part-way there but she was not whole. — Excerpt from a novel in progress This morning Cynthia longed for the escape and restoration of sleep. She never got enough. She had a headache and the lingering pull of a dream: a horse galloped toward her in a snowy paddock, slowed, and skidded to a stop. It stood, breathing…

A chapter from a novel-in-progress — So they drifted apart, maybe pushed by currents beyond Leah’s control, but really, Leah had chosen it. Just as she had stopped making an effort to see or talk to Cynthia, she had also stopped shadowing Smith and Robert and trying to solve Maylin’s mystery. But she had not been…

a poem — Yesterday, far across the stubbled winter field, I saw the black periscoped neck of a lone Canada goose. I watched from my window as it settled and resettled and checked through the daylight hours to see if would fly. I told myself, let nature take its course. In the morning, when it was light enough to look, I peered through binoculars and hoped to find the looping neck— afraid to see it crumpled in the snow.

Her body doesn’t know the season. First hot, then cold, then much too hot, and she is flinging the back door open, fanning her shirt from neck and chest, uttering “Ugh!” “Oh!” “Uhh!” It is October, 66º in the house and 44º outside. She sits at the desk wearing short…