Jake’s mom asked me to write a story about young Jake. Here it is.

Jake woke up when sunlight hit his face through the window. The ski house that his dad had rented for the week was quiet and a little chilly. Jake wore his Spiderman pajamas and was wrapped in his big soft Phillies blanket, so he was warm, but he could tell that the rental house was cold.

"Dad," he yelled. "It's cold.”

His dad didn't answer.

"Dad!" he yelled again. Still no answer.

Jessica Martin heard one of her daughters scream.

“Aaaah!” came the sound from downstairs, followed by a long moan, “Ohhhhh,” and then a thump. Jessica tried to stay focused on her computer screen: page 25 of 35, and still two more articles to edit after this one. She wasn't sure which daughter had yelled; but if it was serious, there would be more yelling, and the other twin would join in. Nobody ran up the stairs, so Jessica kept working.

“Mom!” yelled Tessa, the older twin. “Mahhhhhhhhmm!” Jessica hit the Save icon, sighed, pushed the sliding keyboard under her desk, and stood up. It was only 9:15. The twins had been watching their movie for less than thirty minutes. Lunch was hours away.

Kyle spent most of the afternoon setting fence posts around what Laurie called the “Back 40”, the wild field behind their farmhouse. It was the last part of their farm that wasn’t either planted or used for horse trails and the stable. The field wasn’t 40 acres, or even 10 acres, but Laurie liked the name. Kyle had used a long iron pole to loosen the dirt for each hole, then a post hole digger to create a good cavity two feet deep. He didn’t have the fencing yet; in fact, he didn’t even know why he was fencing the area. But rather than wait until he figured it out, or had the fencing, he had decided to sink the holes. Possibly he just wanted to be outside in the unexpectedly warm April afternoon. He’d gotten half of the holes sunk, eight feet apart, before dusk brought on Maine’s evening chill.

He washed up inside the house, poured a large glass of hard, cold, well water, cut and squeezed an entire half lemon into the glass, and sat at the wooden counter. He’d built the counter himself the year before, reclaiming some large planks from the barn and then planing and oiling it until he was sure  it would hold up to whatever liquid or food they spilled on it.

Julian Cable heard the motors buzzing outside his cabin, listened for a second as they got closer, then dove to the floor. He rolled twice until he was pressed up against the living room bookcase. He heard something drop on his doorstep, then what he now understood to be a drone flew away. He waited and heard nothing else. Staying low, he crawled to the long storage chest by the foot of his bed. Without raising his head, he lifted the chest a few inches— just enough to pull his rifle out from the hollowed recess in the floor. He crawled to the back window and, still without raising his head, looked around the room. A clear line-of-sight showed the back window from the front door. Not ideal, but better than opening the door directly. Gathering himself, he reached up, slid the window open, and slipped over the sill, landing as quietly as he could on the dirt outside. Looking in all directions, he walked slowly around the back and side of the cabin.

Turning the last corner, he saw the brown cardboard box. He looked around again, as far into the distance as he could see, then approached the box. There was no label on the top or sides. No handwritten address or name.

The apple orchard was in full bloom, but the scent was wrong. Spring had always been Gwen’s favorite time of year. She knew how the smells changed with the wind, from faint to strong to gone entirely; how the blossom accumulated and browned on the back porch; how the shadows danced through her kitchen window. Everything changed in the spring; and yet, everything was changing even more this spring. The shadows were too big and still, the fragrance too old and stale, the light too bright, the house too quiet. The postage stamp in her hand cost four cents. For Gwen's entire life, 23 years, stamps had been three cents. She had not expected them to change. Did the increased price mean that her letter was now more important?

She sat at the desk where her mother had read each of her father's letters during the war, often rereading a letter many times. It was Gwen's desk now; it had been hers since her mother died. It had never felt so solitary before.

When I read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”, I was horrified at how dangerous and hateful this country was to gay and queer people, and extremely grateful to Jenkins Reid for writing that book. I know many LGBTQ+ people, and they are all wonderful. I have read this poem in public groups to show my love and support for them, and for Taylor Jenkins Reid.

We can’t tell my dad

He will stop me

He will stop us.

He says our love is wrong

So we hide our love from him.

Jana came into my office: eyes wary, teeth clenched, brow determined, shoulders back.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure, Jana. I was looking for you this morning anyway.”

She looked surprised.

“Oh, why?”

“We’ll get to that. What did you want to see me about?”

She paused, the determination on her face a little uncertain.

“It’s about Carl.”

“Of course it is. What is it this time?”

My closest friend, Ed, passed away two years ago, after many years of happy marriage to his wife Ruth Mordecai, whose works are displayed at galleries including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Israel Museum, the Rose Art Museum, and the Boston Public Library. I wrote this for them.

“She can’t come in with you,” said the radiology technician. “She has to wait outside.”

“But she drove me here to sit with me. She’s my daughter. She was cleared to be with me. I’m claustrophobic. I don’t do well with MRIs. I thought we’d worked this all out.”

The lab tech shook her head.

“With the pandemic, we aren’t letting guests in. You can wear a sleep mask so you don’t see the sides.”

“A sleep mask. Like a blindfold. That’s how I’m supposed to handle being trapped, unable to move, and probably panicking? For a long abdominal procedure that takes 55 minutes?”

They say no one can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, and that seems to be true.

I’m living in space right now, if you can call this living, and no one can hear me scream. Or talk, or cry, or laugh. (My laughs are fake, just to see if I can get any reaction at all.) I can’t hear any of the people around me, either. I think some of them are screaming, based on their expressions. Others seem happy, or at least content. Many are hiding their feelings.

We don’t all look alike here. I’m just guessing, but I think everyone chooses what they want to look like. Some look human, but many do not. I see a lot of body language, even though the bodies aren’t completely solid.