For weeks, you’d been slipping. Collecting speeding tickets, lottery tickets, yelling at the neighbor’s boy, overfeeding the fish. And you were beginning to drink like one. I didn’t say anything because I was one to talk.

I used to say you were the most dependable guy I knew. Mr. Blue-Dress-Shirt-on-Monday, Stripes-on-Tuesday, Must-Squeeze-From-Bottom, Smile-Back-at-the-Taxi-Driver, Call-Your-Mother-on-Her-Birthday, Don’t-Chew-the-Pen-Cap, you were my safe bet. 

Yet there you were now, a grown man on a swing in Central Park, all legs, hair flapping, grinning like a fifth grader, but still gripping the chains. I thought about that time in Key West when I swam out to see the sharks and you stayed clinging to the boat, even after those swimming lessons I’d gotten you at the Y, even though you were seasick.

I wanted more of you back then. 

Now in the park, in your thirties, you were finally all in, flying, quite literally, by the seat of your pants. I turned away for a moment, and then there you were, face down in the dirt. I didn’t have the heart to tell you about your chipped tooth.

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Salwa Emerson is an American writer of Jordanian and European descent and the recipient of the 2025 Andy Award for writing collaboration. She is currently at work on two memoirs: one about her young adulthood in a cult, and another about the relationships that shaped her life before and after.