The evening you refused to sleep, we were over a hundred miles away from our home in Cleveland. A Rust Belt city to which—because of you—your mother and I will forever be tethered. 

Close listening, much like close reading, requires focused, sustained attention to how a story is told, not merely its plot. The work of healing, if not the biophysiological process of cure, is fundamentally narrative in practice.

There was one literary magazine that made you write “THE END” at the end of your story, to signify that when the writing was done, when there were no more pages or writing, it had ended to these idiots or robots.

What I needed was to connect the best way I really knew how: by talking about books, sharing feelings about a story with someone, and through those discussions learning how their mind works and in turn my own.

During the years I had cancer, I sometimes bristled at the language of “wellness” and its trappings. I didn’t need mindfulness; I needed oxaliplatin.