March 31, 2026

A friend says, “I’ve always turned what’s hard for me into something I can offer” and two days later I’m eating Cup o’ Noodles

even though I’ve been making my own ramen soup for at least two years. But it’s raining today, and bone-chilly, and the idea of stooping over a cutting board to slice carrots nightgown-thin feels like trying to pass a bill through Congress. So I put the electric kettle on and peel back the top of a styrofoam container with the words “Instant Lunch” printed on the side in lettering the color of tarnished gold, then grab a fork and take myself upstairs to contemplate the box of stray cords in my office closet, with a lid I can’t close. How I have justified this horde of tangled wire as some kind of disaster preparedness. Or the small Ziplocked bag of orphaned earrings in the bathroom cabinet—orange leatherette teardrop whose twin I lost in a gust of wind in Brooklyn, skinny balsa rectangle inlaid with phases of the moon, a silver hoop lighter than air—I keep in case the match returns, somehow, from a shake of a sleeve of the jacket I wore when it went missing. I want to believe the wait is always worth it, that any loss has purpose. Meanwhile, the heft of what’s been remaindered lies limply without use, testament only to the vagrant fantasy of reunion and repair, and I realize this is a canyon of longing I could follow all the way to the bottom if I let myself fall far enough. But it’s raining today, and bone-chilly, and I want something so salty and sure of itself it will make mouth pucker. I want to carry my grief not like a lesson, but a friend. The cords are leading nowhere. The orange teardrop has fallen through a subway grate. I tilt the cup toward my lips, feel the saline burn of broth, slurp the last noodles free.