November 4, 2025

certain men

There was a David in college. We met senior year fulfilling our remaining
gym requirement, and twice a week circled the outdoor track for an hour.
A few years later: Mathew (with one “t”), who made waffles every Sunday
from his own sourdough starter and whose coffee made my teeth itch and fall
in love with coffee. Then afternoons of tennis with Francisco after two months
of jury duty came to a close. For more than two decades, it’s Nathaniel.
We talk when there is everything or nothing to say and he always ends our calls
with “I’m here for you.” So when Landon and I begin the ritual of leaving
our desks on Thursday afternoons to meet at the parking lot of a local
nature preserve, I find myself in the river of the kind of story that never makes
the news and yet whose ink leaves the deeper mark. In the lines are lanes
absent of hurdles and empty spaces filled with maple syrup and whipped cream
and the reverberation of a striped neon ball against a red clay court and the soft
close of the day with the word “here” lingering, and the way, even when the trail
ends, there seems to be more of it still.