Halloween. The sweet sugar smell of candy corn and the warm orange glow of carved pumpkins. Crunchy acorns underfoot. Neighborhood children shrieking and throwing burnt-gold leaves. Every year these small things take me back to an autumn night 34 years ago. I remember that afternoon, how we spent the first stages of labor hurriedly carving…

  this morning there is a young woman sitting on a cold step on the river's edge her back to me, she stares across the brown green water watching, smoking perhaps worrying.   The past or today it floats away   all summer I had waited too timid or lacking motivation inspiration or just a friend…