Tonight, it’s personal. — Somewhere in the unknowable hours, ten years ago tonight, she was stolen from us. The hole through which she was ripped still bleeds. Sometimes it gapes and weeps and aches, leaving me reaching for nothingness and screaming into the emptiness between that night and the rest of my life. Most…

It’s not romantic, but I was so in love. — I pulled into my parking space on the last day of the best years of my young life with Steve Miller blasting from my speakers and tears streaming down my face. Strange the song should play that morning. The next week I was to board a plane to take a…

The hitman found me years later — to apologize — In the delayed adolescence of my early thirties, I followed a slippery slope (read “a man”) into a Central American crime syndicate that pumped penny stocks and ruined lives for profit. Long before I surrendered my morals and my safety to his charms and adopted persona, my Wolf of Wall…

I still don’t know if George killed his wife. — Once upon a time, I sang for my supper with a few insignificant county newspapers in the deep south. Working local government beats and small-town scandals, my first big assignment was covering a prisoner-advocacy group fighting the death penalty. One staffer was a giant, 40ish man with a distinguished beard…

Recollection and reflection — Easter Sunday last year, I woke to a vision. Not prone to visions, I knew at once what it was as it came, perfect and fully formed behind my eyes. I sat next to you as you lay dying in an aching, far-future moment. …

Lessons learned too late — The day after the Saturday night I met Henry was the annual festival in the town square of that terminal Texas burg. …

An affair to misremember — Deep in the Heart of Texas, there are a thousand little cow towns strewn like confetti over the Llano Estacado. My father was born in one and picked another to call his own after the divorce. …