July 22, 2025

sliver

In another version of this story, I’m living in my 
beachside apartment in Santa Monica, still sporting 
the belly button piercing. I’m tan and don’t have 
grey hair and my muscles are loose from rollerblading. 
I’ve become a vegan, or else someone who’s stopped
eating sugar and evangelizes about it. I join impromptu 
drum circles and meditate, wear sandalwood beads 
around my wrist. I’ve traveled to Nepal. I’ve stopped
reading the news, have learned how to surf, drink 
however many glasses of water a day, call my dentist
by his first name, sleep through the night.

But I never did sign the lease that July. Instead, I flew 
to New York to see my uncle one last time. A week later,
I had dinner on West 79th Street with the person who would,
in three years, become my wife. I ordered a cucumber gimlet.
There was the thinnest sliver of lime poised on the rim.