In workshops, the teach would read a few pages of a story and ask everyone to guess who wrote it. Teach would try to be tricky and read Melville or another Someone, but it would usually be student work.

In Devon’s class, Cristina guessed a story was mine. “Why?” “Because the parents were the Smiths, clearly, Monica likes The Smiths.” And we chuckled because she was right, but it was unintentional, and I was 19 at the time, pretty embarrassing stuff, and Devon asked what in the story signified it as mine other than cultural junk, and Donnell, my favorite person to work with because he was so sharp! so on point! so sincere! said my sentences sprawl out and unfold. He slowly pushed his hand out, his fingers spreading, they keep going and going and then, there, he pulled his hand back. He’s in his late-30s now and a concierge at a downtown hotel. I haven’t seen him in a long time but we would bump into each other on the street, his bulky headphones, his tie, his peacoat. He’d squeeze my elbow when we would stop to briefly say hello on Wabash or wherever I would see him. When he wrote about sex or food or growing up or anything we all wrote about, we would giggle and nearly collapse and then it was sad and quiet and finally bright, just bright, because he did it better than almost everyone in that department, and it made me happy he existed.

I haven’t written a story in a long time and don’t have the ambition to—I don’t know if I ever did or will. But I am plugging away at this zine that’s coming out in a few weeks. It is like if I keep writing run-on sentences, I won’t even notice.