My First Inkling When I was 7, my grandmother told me she saw Halley’s comet in 1910. As a young woman in rural Tennessee, she was amazed.
She explained it would return in 1986, when she’d be in Heaven and I’d be a grown man. That was my first inkling, lovingly and mysteriously rendered, that all things change — and people we love pass away, though the stars appear to stay the same.
In Seattle, 1986, I watched the comet scar the darkness, my grandmother’s memory burning bright within me. By the time Halley returns in 2061, I will have joined her in infinity. — T.S.
Davis Little Allies My 10-year-old nephew and his friends were playing in the yard when my sister overheard them using the word “gay” as a put-down.