Amy Krouse Rosenthal is Dead

In college

I wanted to be a writer

so badly

I turned down

a paid

communications

internship

with the VP of

strategic marketing

at Avera McKennan

Hospital

so I could intern

at a place

called City Weekly

a rising

publication

out of Omaha:

think Vogue

for the largest population

in South Dakota.

The fork in the road

and I chose

the

road

less

read.

Oops.

The building

we occupied

is now

being razed

for highway.

Regardless,

the choice was made.

I met a woman

so effortlessly cool

she gave me the memoir

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

and I gobbled it up

found mythology

in the minutiae

of being human.

I wrote cover stories

and turned down a hot-air balloon ride:

afraid

of heights,

I lost the bouquet

from the new barbershop

thanking me

for my thoughtful piece

to the

photographer

who was getting married

and paid.

I was writing

for

clips.

I don’t think about

this decision much

these days:

It was the wrong one

sure,

but

I’ve made

worse.

Only now,

my son’s dad

is delivering the books

that have been basement dwellers,

some

for decades

as he demolishes

his past

and uncovered

in the ruins

is

the guided journal

for this memoir

yet unwritten

by my hand.

I open it

and read

the introduction:

Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s

hope

that we might all

find magic

in our humanness:

from affection

to zeal.

It hits me.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal

is dead.

From ovarian cancer.

She last wrote

a dating profile

for her husband

so he might

find

love

again.

The same name

as my

last

love,

and I know

I’m not that kind

or giving

or abstemious

just

a zoetrope,

comforted

by the illusion

of motion

when in reality

I am a period.

Em dash.

Done.

And all this to say

full circle:

the fork

was

me.

Eating my

words,

my womanhood,

my writing

which lies

stagnant

in a basement,

unwritten,

maybe

to be born

when I

die.