In July 2013, I ran a marathon up Mount Adams near Trout Lake, Washington. Nobody questioned my physical prowess, because the accomplishment was indisputable. But, if you actually pressed your fingers against my belly, you would have felt pudge, and you probably would have been surprised to not feel functioning abdominal muscles (you’d also be surprised to have your fingers on the belly of someone you had just met, but let’s skip that part). My abs weren’t important unless I found myself in the plank position, and why would I attempt plank when I could lie down, sit or run 13 miles? I learned how to engage my gluteal muscles for the first time in early 2014, when my new gym membership included sessions with a personal trainer. However, the fact still stands that I was able to complete a mountain marathon with scant help from my abs or glutes.

Abstract nouns serve me poorly when I speak of my father. Consider these: autodidact, addict, narcissist, scholar, suicide. I want a clearer picture of that afflicted human who made me. So in this piece, I will compare the death of my father, William Cameron Pulman Jr., also known as Bill, with the death of my guinea pig Harry, who was alternately known as Prince Harry, Harry B., Ice-Cold-Rapper-Harry, and the Queen.

If my face were my heart, I would tear it to ribbons. If I could pick it open to reveal its insides, sear it with a hot compress, slow it with an ice pack, prick it with needles to release the infection—more exactly, the grief— or pinch it till it bled, it wouldn’t be beating now. The exposed parts of me have been healed through time and the help of an incredible aesthetician. Most of the inner parts have healed through a similar delicate and aggravating process

You go to Thessaloniki, Greece. Not to the parts of Greece rebuilt to escort tourists towards white statues of petty gods that no one believes in anymore, but Greece where the Grecians live and the water meets them.

I insert my fare card and two wings open wide enough for me to pass through Farragut West station towards the Kennedy Center. Gleaming in the silver dress my grandmother found at the Jewish women’s resale store and forty-five minutes away from my fifteenth opera, I am ready…