First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

What If Marriage Makes You Lonelier?

Vanishing Point
by Freya Manfred

The moment arrives when you say,
“I don’t dislike this man,
but how did I marry him?”
Something about his wintry voice,
the way he can’t or won’t show his face,
and how small and alone you feel
out here on earth’s curve,
driving day and night,
never reaching a destination,
until you realize you’re running parallel to him,
and you’ll never meet.

from Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2008.

(Image: Vertigo, Magic Staircase by Belgian artist, Leon Spilliaert, 1908)

How Not To Be Anxious for the Holidays, Part 2

It’s high time to get squirrelly about the season. I’ve already begun my annual “I hate New Year’s Eve” rant. A few years ago, I experimented with spending December 31 alone. (I’d inched towards it a year earlier, by meeting friends at the movies and getting home well before midnight). By 2007, I was ready for the challenge of a completely solo New Year’s Eve. I prepared a lovely 3-course dinner, put a screener of The Great Debaters into the DVD player, and settled into a comfy evening in sweatpants. “This isn’t half bad,” I thought. Before taking the first sip of my martini, I had an odd sensation of liquid on my head. I looked up, and to my horror, saw water dripping from the ceiling. “This can’t be happening,” I cried out into an empty room. Yet there was no time for pity. I quickly moved my uneaten meal out of harms way, put a bucket in its place, and called a handyman, who miraculously came to the rescue and fixed the leaky toilet upstairs. If there’s a bright side to this story, it’s that I was lucky to be in place at the right moment, rather than coming home later to serious water damage. I heated dinner and rebooted the evening.

Holiday tip: Don’t get ambushed by the season. Plan ahead (and check your plumbing.)

(Photo: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, 1968)