What the Grief Actually Is

What the Grief Actually Is

Present Day, June 23, 2026I Am Crying requires some explanation because grief is a word that gets used loosely and what I mean by it is specific.Ordinary grief has a trajectory. It is sharpest at the moment of loss and then, for most people, it softens over time into...
Constantinople and the Weight of What Was Lost

Constantinople and the Weight of What Was Lost

Constantinople, 1490sI arrived in Constantinople several decades after the fall. The city had been Ottoman for long enough that it had begun to absorb its new identity while still carrying the wounds of the transition, the way a body carries a scar: healed but not...