My cousin was serving the coffee. We’d just made it through lunch without any emotional mishaps: my eighty-year-old mother, my brisk, patrician sixty-year-old cousin, and forty-something me. The clafouti was delicious, the conversation only mildly treacherous. For some reason, we’d chanced upon the notion of queer theory and though it gave my cousin a…

Planes and trains, roads and departure lounges… I’m on the road a lot these days, emptying out and filling up suitcases, sleeping in strangely capacious beds, waking up and trying to grasp and recognize the light. I’m in love, too, so the trips, intriguing and exciting as they are, are framed with a crisp,…

Fresh garlic from a farmer’s market can be found in Lesya’s kitchen, next to the bundles of dried herbs from her garden. I pluck an entire head to roast, for the mushroom risotto I will make for her, a smell she’ll be able to savour as she comes home, weary from a day’s teaching….