My Last Innocent Year

by Daisy Alpert Florin

When I told Jason once that I didn’t understand poetry, he said, “That’s because you’re searching for meaning. You have to let the work happen to you. Forget whether you understand it or not—how does it make you feel?”

I’d seen Debra at her worst, and I’ve found that is often what binds women together. Men admire each other when they are at their best, but women enjoy meeting each other in pits of despair.

“You don’t have to protect her,” Kelsey said whenever I worried about Debra. “It’s not your responsibility.” But whose was it, I wondered? Who was there to catch us if not our friends?

when he sees her for the first time in a long while: “Each time you happen to me all over again.”