Andrew Riutta
An Ex-Lover’s Birthday
Mid-April, and, tonight, a rare event of thunder snow dominates our skies. Our skies. Except for this, it’s pretty much been an ordinary day, a Sunday of pancakes and sausages and flashes of birds going from trees to power lines. And then back. A few unassuming thoughts on the meaning of it all. But somewhere in those thoughts there’s one that has kept trying to push its way to the front of the crowd, and now it seems it’s finally broken through. A memory—lying on that grassy hill, where I told her I would die without her. And here I am, almost forty years later, just living my life.
toxic masculinity . . . he rips apart the earth to bury a mouse
About the Author
Andrew Riutta was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He is a father, chef, and Zamboni operator. His essay “The Myths of Manhood,” from the collection This I Believe: On Fatherhood (Jossey-Bass), was featured on Public Radio International’s Bob Edwards Show in 2012.