She feels the pulse between the words. In a crowded dining room, Mrs. Ramsay absorbs the intentions and experiences of every person, lives deeply in every detail she observes.

To the Lighthouse is written how I try to live.

The dinner party begins awkwardly, with rivalry and reluctance preoccupying the characters in attendance. Mrs. Ramsay binds them together partially through social graces, but more through empathy. She possesses the ability to feel, exactly, the mind of the person beside her, whether content or anxious or in love. She is the party’s center because others cannot help but connect their threads to her, offerings for her tapestry. Then, the candles are lit. Mrs. Ramsay knows everyone is “brought nearer by the candlelight, and composed, as they had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table, for the night was now shut off by panes of glass.” She recognizes how the candlelight “ripples” the world outside “so strangely that here, inside the room, seemed to be order and dry land; there, outside, a reflection in which things wavered and vanished, waterily.” She has made a refuge in that room. The others enjoy it without thought. Mrs. Ramsay alone feels how the world beyond the glass might swirl and eddy, but the persons at the table are together in that moment, whole.

I try to inhabit moments. I try to watch my beagle’s paws trot on the sidewalk, feel pride at that word my daughter mastered, taste my coffee. Sensations like these are the stuff of memories, but the memory is the attenuated form. The moment itself is the thing. Among petty concerns and distractions, it’s impossible to experience every moment in a life fully, but Mrs. Ramsay succeeds in it that evening, and Virginia Woolf in writing it. She relegates the doings of the dinner to parentheticals. The feelings are the matter, and Mrs. Ramsay prizes them. The guests discuss and eat and jest; among them, Mrs. Ramsay becomes aware of something “immune from change” that “shines out… in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby.”

The novel sweeps forward a decade, during which the seaside home of the dinner party lies vacant, battered by wind and time. The news comes in another parenthetical, midsentence: “...Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before…” Having breathed life into her matriarch with lyrical precision, Woolf quietly snuffs it out.

The characters miss her. Poets, philosophers and artists had sat round her in that candlelit room, but the vision was all hers. Mrs. Ramsay had the gift of attending to the moment. She could break it like bread and share it.

I reread the dinner party this afternoon, in quarantine: a student to whom I was exposed tested positive for the coronavirus. I’m healthy, probably. I sat on my porch. Even in an upstate January, the air can feel crisp without biting, and wind reveal patches of color in the sky.

When they looked me in the eye to tell me I had cancer, I was still a little too loopy, coming out of my last surgery, making the same joke over and over to my wife. The joke was that I didn’t remember who she was. It was infantile. I realize that, but I blame the drugs.

“So you’re saying that based on the shape of this thing, you can tell it’s cancer even without a biopsy?”

“Yes, Mr. Aguilar.”

“So surgery?”

“Yes.”

“And chemo?”

“Yes.”

The easy questions were out of the way.

“So what about,” I hesitated because of the gravity of the next word. It was heavy in my mouth like someone had slipped a lead weight in there, sour, old, and heavey. “What about survival?”

“It’s impossible to make promises,” the doctor said, making that motion you make when anything could be possible, a grand shrug with the arms up nearly as high as a football ref calling a field goal, but a lot less exciting.

“And what about a bag? Will I end up with...” hard swallow, “one of those?

This time the doctor didn’t say a word, but she made another grand anything could happen motion.

Then they left. We sat there for only a moment in silence, my wife dizzy with the what-ifs of losing me. And I was dizzy from the anesthetics, but at that moment, I had somewhat of a life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment.

I remembered a book called “Redemption” by Mike Wilkerson. It was about redeeming past hurts, past sin struggles, and even current sin struggles. I was not a huge fan, truth be told, but I was a team player.

I read about the Isrealites being led out of Egypt by their God. The main teaching takeaway from the chapter was something like, “You are not the center of the story. You like one of those Isrealites is a minor character in the larger story of God.”

My day was Sept 6, 2020. In the matter of a breath, I went from a healthy, youngish man that people looked to for answers to the sickest person I know.

Thinking of that pesky notion of not being the center of the story, when the doctor and nurse left us, I felt something jostle within me, an idea, an opportunity. I felt like I heard over the intercom of my heart a word perhaps from the same God I’d read about back in Wilkerson’s book. I had the thought, and it was in God’s voice, speaking in first person, “Now is your chance to worship me as your first response. You only get one chance to worship first.”

I excitedly hurried my wife beside me with a bible in hand.

“Let’s thank God,” I said, so we tearfully shouted thank-yous and hallelujahs like we were two bible thumpers on the way to Wednesday night bible study, but happier--maybe.

He suffered long with lunacy,

to which he lost an ear,

then sought some help at Saint-Rémy

in spring the foll'wing year.

Now, little did poor Vincent know,

the coverture had split

and he beheld the spirits' glow-

he wasn't having fits.

Vibrations whorled and energies'

exquisite colors shone

with such beatific majesty,

he couldn't let them go.

He painted visions frantic'ly,

from starry night to loch-

the roiling, silent, canvas pleas

of tortured soul, Van Gogh.

Pa calls me dumber than rocks all the time, especially when he asks for my help, but also when he doesn't. He called me dumber than a rock when I was sitting at the kitchen table stirring my Ovaltine and Ma was right by us fixin' breakfast on the stove. "I didn't mean to spill it." I said, cause I didn't and then cause he made me real mad I also said, "My name is Ralph, not Dumber, not Than, and not Rocks, and then he said, "You're dumb like a fox," and Ma said afterward, patting me on the back real soft, real nice, "That means he thinks your smart, Ralph." Why doesn't he make up his mind?

Ma calls me stupid, but never to my face, only when she's on the phone with Gertie late at night and she thinks I'm fast asleep, but I'm not. Sometimes I just lay awake for no reason at all listening to night sounds, the owls hoot and the squirrels scurrying on the roof, wishing I was one of them instead of me, cause they don't use words; just screams, barks, hisses and coos, which are much easier to understand and less likely to maim.

It would make me smile if Ma could call Gertie when I do things right, like turning the compost, or stacking the wood, or shoveling the snow, but she doesn't. She only calls Gertie to tell her everything I want to forget and hearing it again makes me sad twice in one day. I didn't mean to kill Miss Sarah's kitten. I only squeezed it hard because it was the cutest thing I had ever seen I forgot for a minute how strong I am. And I didn't mean to look in Mr. & Mrs. Gimbel's bedroom window next door and see them both naked. I thought I was supposed to go help people when they moan or scream. Gertie lives so far away, I never get to see her face when Ma tells her about my mistakes. That's what she calls what I do, mistakes, and then she always says, "He's just too stupid to know better. He's really not a bad person."

So if I'm a good person, what's so bad about being stupid, or being dumb? As far as I know there are lots of really smart people, that do lots of really bad things, and not by mistake. On purpose. And as far as I know, I've never done anything bad on purpose, so why can't they just let me be just Ralph, instead of stupid Ralph or dumber than a rock Ralph. I've never met a fox, but if I do, maybe I'll ask him, "Are you really dumb or really smart, and does it matter?" Maybe he'll answer and maybe he won't.

Hell 4 a Heart

what a rocky start, life just sucks us dry.

Then we find something strange that makes us want to try.

And fight you have without a salve, not much else to soothe,

the aches and pains and hidden scars, battle worn and bruised.

Through the years, buckets of tears, you’ve learned how to survive,

Tit-for-Tat bargin this for that just to stay alive.

But now survival is done put it on it’s shelf, you’ve paid your price and dues,

It’s time to live your life without the strife, it’s time to live for you.

“Did I ever tell you that stakeouts are the worst?”

“All the time,” he says with fake exasperation. In reality he’s smiling under his black fedora.

She puts her feet up on the dash with a huff, one hand nearly spilling her steaming coffee onto his lap.

“Hey there!” he says, pushing her hand back to the other side of the car. She just chuckles, and he shakes his head and puts his hands back on the wheel. Not that they’d be going anywhere anytime soon.

While she slurps her coffee loudly, he does a recheck of their surroundings.

An old factory looms across the street, dark and still, like the rest of the block. The moon hangs, suspended, above them, like it will never let morning come. A single streetlamp casts a dingy yellow glow on the trash-covered ground outside the factory, and the rest of the building is obscured by the shadows of pipes and overgrown ivy.

Their case is pretty simple this time around; the building surveillance has video of two men, shady types, entering this abandoned factory with a suspicious package. They still don’t know if it’s a sack of money, hoard of potatoes, hell, it might be a stockpile of bibles. The other thing they don’t know is whether it’s a bomb, which is why they’re sitting around instead of getting in on the action.

And by ‘they’ he means the police… and him. He looks across the car at his makeshift partner. Her badge is just visible under her jacket. Official police.

He, on the other hand, is just a lowly detective. He leans back in his seat and takes a cigarette out of his jacket, putting it in his mouth.

“Don’t light that,” she says, glaring across the car at him.

He shrugs. “My car, my rules,” he says out the side of his mouth, taking out his lighter.

She sighs and checks her sideview mirror for the millionth time. She wasn’t actually mad at him; he had too much charm for that. Or so he chose to believe.

“What are the chances we actually get to storm this place?” she asks him, rolling down a window and leaning away from his cigarette smoke.

He takes a puff and blows in her direction. “I’d say pretty low. There hasn’t been any movement at all.”

After a brief moment she snorts and says, “Remember last time we did this?”

He holds his cigarette away from his face in thought. “The last time you stooped so low as to work with me, a lowlife?”

“You are a lowlife,” she agrees. “But I’m talking about how you tripped over a pile of wet towels and laid there while I caught the crook.”

He resumed smoking and trained his eyes on the dark factory. “I don’t recall that. I was the one that threw a wet towel on his head,” he said with a smirk.

“That did nothing. And don’t you know what smoking does to your lungs?”

“You can get out of the car anytime, Officer.”

She huffs again, but he can tell it’s in good humor. “How about this? If we go after these guys—which we better, ’cause I’m bored—and I catch them, you have to quit smoking.”

“And what do I get if I catch ’em?” he asks, grinning.

She meets his eye. “I’ll talk to the department about you. Working for real.”

He laughs, short and loud. “Alright, it’s a deal.”

Before she could respond, a gunshot fires, and a man exits the factory running full force, carrying a bag. He’s rounding the corner of the building.

They exchange a glance as they scramble out of the car. Looks like they’ll be chasing this goon around the factory.

He throws his cigarette on the ground. He’ll get to light another one later.

I blinked, my vision still fuzzy. I yawned, newly awakened eyes darting about my pink-wallpapered room, the sunlight seeping in through the thin curtains. I smiled, my dry lips cracking. I groaned as I stepped out of bed, stretching again, this time my arms and legs with lunges and small arm-circles.

I passed all of my picture frames hanging on my bedroom wall on my way to the bathroom. Me and my sister at Disneyland. Me and my sister asleep together when we were little. Halloween of 4th grade, me as Cinderella, my sister as a hot dog.

I chuckled as I remembered that Halloween. Nobody knew why my sister had chosen that outfit, and I’m not sure to this day if she even knew her own motives. It was quite funny, really. A little princess next to a hot dog.

I trudged to the bathroom, my bladder feeling as if it was about to burst. I groaned as I opened the door and locked it behind me. As quick as humanly possible, my pants were on the ground, but upon glancing down, I realized that something was off.

I shrieked and shrieked again. I shook in horror. Where the day before I’d been a girl, I now had a...a...

“Is everything alright in there, Jane?” My mother pounded furiously, terror seeping through her tired voice. I almost considered telling her, but that was weird, being that I was 16.

“Y-yup, Mom. Everything’s... good.” I could hear her sigh of relief.

“Okay, honey. Don’t do that again. You woke us all up.” I could hear her grumbling under her breath as her footsteps faded away down the hall.

My heartbeat quickened again as I looked down at the monstrosity attached to me. Unfortunately, I still had to pee, so...

I stumbled out of the bathroom, glad it was over with. That was officially the weirdest experience I’d had in my life. I shuddered, then started to panic again. What had happened? Was this scientifically possible? Was I part of a government experiment?! I tried to calm myself down, but it was no use. What did this mean for me? Was I a boy now? I mean, I had never felt anything against being a girl but... I guess now that I’d changed I missed it? But what did this thing mean to me anyway? Well, that’d be weird to have to explain in relationships...

Okay, okay, I was getting ahead of myself now. All I knew was that I was a girl, and had always been a girl. I would not let this, whatever this was, get the best of me. I would go on as I always did, and if it came to that point, I would explain it to my parents. No matter how weird that conversation would be. No matter how ludicrous I would sound. Ugh.

Then another thought occurred to me: did I still have boobs? I ran a quick hand over my chest, and, to my dismay, they were GONE! I mean, not that I’d had much before, but...

I walked back to my room pulled on my PE uniform, still wearing a bra even though I didn’t need to. I mean, I’d be extremely uncomfortable going to school without one. I needed my PE clothes on so I didn’t have to change. It’d be too... obvious.

I grabbed my school bag and went down to breakfast. My sister was there, reading the back of the LIFE© box, shoveling the cereal into her mouth. Her glasses slid down her nose slowly, and she pushed them back up every few seconds. She nodded hello to me, then went back to the word search. I poured myself some TRIX© and sat down myself, fidgeting with my shorts.

I finished quickly, and dashed out the door, not wanting to wait for the bus today. It was cold outside, most likely in the low 50′s, too cold for shorts and a tee, but I did not want to go back home. So, I braved the cold.

I got to school, wishing I’d just stayed home. I felt uncomfortable walking around, hoping that nobody would notice anything off. you know, besides that I was wearing my PE clothes.

But nobody did. I got through all of my classes without anybody saying anything, and ran home again.

I got into bed that night, wondering what the next day of being male would bring. Another day of wearing PE clothes to school? Ugh, I’d figure it out in the morning. I drifted off into a restless sleep.

The next morning, I woke and promptly visited the bathroom. I dropped my pants and was delighted to find that I was once again me.

I used to hear:

"Don't show your tears,

Protect the girl,

Hide all your fears."

Now I awaken

On this brand new day,

And they still talk,

But it's different what they say:

"Dress up pretty no matter what,

Stay thin, be poise, have grace

And stop being such a slut."

I used to be Kyle, but now I'm not.

And their words and voices I still hear a lot.

Either way they have so many expectations: "Be happy! Smile!"

I guess you can be anything after you pretend for a while.