333/365, Justin

The boy on the school bus with uneven eye sockets. He had a cleft palate and harelip that left him perpetually snotty, and someone had transplanted toes where his fingers should have been. He liked to hold hands.

334/365, Ismah Vassell

Everyone thought that Grandma’s stroke had left her mute. She wasn’t. “I don’t have anything to say to those people,” she said. “Don’t tell your mother.” And she never spoke to them again. But she spoke to me.

335/365, Mrs. Morrow

She had blonde Farrah Fawcett wings that threatened to go airborne at any given moment. She might have taught English, but I learned from her that each of my cursive letters had to have it’s very own tail.

336/365, Leslie Semonian

When they told her that she would die soon, she did what anyone would do. She went right out and learned how to snowboard. She lived without apology. It felt like the whole world went to her funeral.

337/365, Sammy

Sammy had Tourette’s Syndrome. He was prone to saying, “I want to fuck you. Eeek!” and “You’re a nigger.” Didn’t matter if you were black or white, male or female. He was a guest on the Oprah show.

338/365, Fiona Howe

She was naturally beautiful, first thing in the morning, but she hated the bump on her nose. One day, said nose met our dance teacher’s elbow, mid-pirouette. I can still feel the cracking sound the breaking bones made.

339/365, June

June was pregnant for two years after Uncle Trevor left her. Surprised? Don’t be. Here’s the recipe. Turn your childhood sweetheart into an alcoholic husband. Add three children, financial pressure, uterine fibroids, and shake until uniform with madness.

346/365, Ted Hennessy

What you noticed first were pretty blue eyes and the uncanny roundness of his forehead. You would have seen the whip-sharp wit and that laughter would follow him to the end of the world. Rest in peace.

349/365, Gloria

As a teenager, she wrote:

Lies
Damned lies
In people’s curious eyes
Leave their lips
And sink
Ships

And then she disappeared. Recently, I found her. Instead of a happy reunion, we had a few minutes of disinterest.

350/365, Mona Shah

Mona was from India and wore big round glasses and long black hair in two thick braids that reached her ankles and was scented by perfumed oils and a strong musky something whose flavor I could never name.

351/365, Dawn

The daughter of a Carolina politician. Once said, “I don’t want no faggots sittin’ on my bed!” and “My Gawd, there’s a niggra joggin’. I didn’t know that niggras jogged!” So, it was impossible to like her. Still.

352/365, Denise Hoff

She was from Medford and she laughed a lot and she talked a mile a minute and oh my god that’s so funny and she was the kind of person you wanted to tell to. Just. Slow. Down.

353/365, Felicia Heiliczer

My Jew-turned-born-again-Christian friend, used to badger me daily with Jesus. When I switched schools, I told her I was moving to the islands to do soft-core porn and deal drugs. She believed me, until this past June.

354/365, Georgina Garcia

We called her G-squared. She took writing seriously. A preposition is anything a bird can do to a cloud, she said. Life is difficult for the sensitive, she said. But be the preposition, she said. Feel the cloud.

355/365, Eddie Baugh

Uncle Eddie was a mailman and spent my childhood drunk. Everyone said he wasn’t sick a day. No self-respecting virus or bacteria could live in his blood. It was that pickled. But cancer respects no body, even Eddie’s.

356/365, Cori Lorenzon

She had red, red hair and thick tight curls and the biggest, roundest blue eyes you ever saw. Once, she wrote from Paris, saying, “Most of the people here are bilingual, many are trilingual, and I, alas, lingual.”

357/365, Carolyn Skoog

The summer we were 13, she wore her long blonde hair loose and tight red Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and told all of our friends she was the super secret sister of John Schneider from the Dukes of Hazzard.

358/365 Jay

The day Nelson Mandela spoke in Cambridge, it rained so hard we chose, instead, to spend the whole day in bed. He said, “I love you, you know,” and it changed the way I loved anyone else, forever. [rewrite this one]

359/365, Goddess

Being deaf never stops her. Where I go, she goes. When I sleep, she sleeps. My delicious, flirtatious snugglebunny pixie stinkerbelle. My funny chocolate coffee fudge sandwich thief. My punkin’ noodle babydoodle. My morning smile. My nightly snuggle. My heart.

360/365, Apples

Fawn-colored leading man. My main squeeze. My sweet boy. Someone told him that Greyhounds are Beagles and should howl at sirens and sing in the house. Use your inside voice, Bubbie. Come, Poodle. Play dead. Gimme a kiss.

331/365, S.D.

June. Sushi. Ogunquit, Singing Beach. With blooms of lettuce from your mother’s garden, you made salad with mint and fresh tomatoes. Newport. July. Concord, Walden Pond, Newport News. When August faded to Fall, you were my September 11.

362/365, Mrs. Downer

The plump old woman with pendulous breasts from across the street. When I got my first brassiere, she came to congratulate me on the humiliation, the chore of extra clothing, the painful little nubs that wouldn’t hide anymore.

363/365, C.C.

The truth was, everyone who could hurt her, did. Beginning with her father, in ways that a father should rather die than do. Followed by her mother, who chose not to listen. Followed by me. Followed by you.

364/365, Mother

Her grandfather was a minister, and her grandmother marked her from the beginning as “wayward”. She could not keep a secret. She loved to sing. She loved Errol Flynn, Patsy Cline, roses, the British royal family. And me.

365/365, Richie

My very first crush. I was 4. He, 14, lived next door. I wanted to marry him. He wanted to ride his bike and climb trees. He didn’t see me.

It is a song that still plays today.