“I like being a man but not what men often represent, and isn’t the whole point to take this muscle and scruff and sculpt it into something more?” A personal essay at Quartz by Thomas Page McBee.

“My grandmother saved stale bread
in a wooden box on the third shelf
in her little pantry closet. She put it
on hold, as if the bread had come to
some strange junction in its life
where famished children must wait
and watch to see what it would become.”
 
A poem by Laura A. Lord.

“How do you tell someone that you love them but that love has been deprioritized? How do you handle learning that you’re a junk bond? A short-term investment folded for the long family game?” Felicia Sullivan writes about losing friends as one ages — and always being the single friend.

“Competence as defined by numbers, not by a piece of wood taking shape in the hands. Not a shelter finding its form. Or even something as simple as a meal cooked over fire.” Ben Hewitt muses on craft and learning in a culture that is doing its best to eradicate human competence.