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Relief

March 29, 2017

Is it different when the world shifts due to nature, rather than humans? he asked. I wonder what that feels like.

Aren’t humans nature, though? she replied. She felt, every day, as if the very ground shifted beneath her when she read the news.

You know what I’m talking about, he said.

But all she really knew was the feel of the house shifting in an earthquake, the sickness in her stomach as the wineglasses clinked together, and the relief when it stopped. All she really knew was that, now, day after day, relief had ceased to arrive.

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End of the month

March 28, 2017

She knew her toddler should eat more than dry cereal every morning, but she could not afford the waste of half a banana, eight sections of orange. She only gave him what he’d gobble.

It was already hard enough at the end of the month, when she sometimes went a few days without eating more than a slice of bread after the money ran out. Now, said Jimmy from down the block, they might lose healthcare, too.

It can’t get worse, right? she thought. Her baby was asleep, but she would stay awake for hours seeking an answer.

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Dopamine

March 27, 2017

We need you to take this call, Mr. President, they said, but he could hear the tour approaching, the drone of the guide, children’s voices, the thump of feet.

I just want to say hello, he said, and he ducked out, off to welcome the people to the White House, off to tell them how great he was making America, even as he walked away from the work at hand. Governing had never been satisfying, and he wanted to return to the work of glad-handing, of getting that dopamine hit delivered by smiling faces, by clapping, by cheers.

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Cherry blossoms

March 26, 2017

When I arrived, the blossoms were weak. The cherry blossoms are a racket, I said to a colleague. Every year, crazy weather takes them out.

But two days before my departure, I was riding down the hotel elevator, and the woman sharing the ride said, The cherry blossoms popped today!

Outside, I confirmed her report. The trees had transformed from scrubby to magical, the blossoms exploding in the spring sun. While I wasn’t paying attention, the world was changing around me, becoming more beautiful despite my cynical expectation.

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Navigational cues

March 25, 2017

Inside the restaurant, I found myself taking wrong turns, standing in awkward places, fumbling with my phone as I tried to find my friends.

Where are you? I messaged. I told them I needed to go to the back bar, and they sent me somewhere I don’t recognize.

This is how it is in a city that my heart clasps tightly, but my memory clasps loosely. Each building tells me a story, but I have lost all my navigational cues in this new era.

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A win or a loss

March 24, 2017

Do you consider it a win or a loss? She stared so hard into her drink, he wondered if her gaze might crush the ice.

He considered it a win that he wasn’t in the Congressman’s office, but was instead shoulder to shoulder with a raucous Friday night crowd. He considered it a win that she was talking to him in the first place.

I need to know if I should still talk to you, she said.

There are no winners at all right now, he said. Just people who can sleep at night and those who can’t.

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What’s best for the women

March 23, 2017

We know what’s best for the women, the Congressman said.

We know what they don’t need, said another.

It was a day when aides brought water in clear glasses and briefing documents, and the world changed, slowly, after much discussion. But on this day, they talked about mammograms, births, deaths.

How are we going to make sure what we’re planning is enough if we haven’t talked to the women involved? asked the second Congressman.

One thought of his mother. Another of his sister. Another, his wife.

Well, said the first Congressman, they’d back us. They know we’re right.

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