“Braunwyn is a fiction writer whose work I’ve known and admired a long time.”

My mother was the first to notice. She was always acutely aware of animals, nature, and cute things that cooed.

Self-portrait because I once saw a door and knew not to open. Because behind every door is a mouth, and the tongue, a road.

I think it was the first time it hit me that I was disposable, that we all were, that we players were on an assembly line of talent, and when we reached the end, it didn’t matter much whether we fell in the trash or not.

If the child is the father of the man, couldn’t the reverse also be true? That the man, too, becomes a child again, in the presence of his own child.

It was a favorite line of his. More than him saying it, I was frustrated by the expectation that a nine-year-old should know how to thaw and cook red meat. I was forever failing at things I was never taught to do.