My Last Innocent Year

by Daisy Alpert Florin

He stopped behind me and rested his hands on the back of my chair; if I leaned back, my shoulder blades would have touched his fingers.

I held my breath, felt it swell in my chest until I couldn’t hold it anymore.

New York was a city allergic to nostalgia, buildings always rising and falling, the old cleared away to make room for the new.

lot of marriages fall apart when kids come into the picture, squabbles about money, who’s going to take care of this or that. Some

Momentum or energy. Oxygen.” He nodded, as if satisfied to have found the right word.

We take our decisions with us, no matter how much we wish we could leave them behind.

First, I ask myself if it’s something I can fix. And if it’s not, I ask if it’s something I can live with.” “And what if it isn’t something you can live with?” “Then I go back and ask myself the first question again.”

The thing about Lauren Fishman, the thing I sometimes forgot, was that she died.