How We Spend Our Days: ESTHER COHEN

May 2025

I think about how
I’ve been waking up
in a rent stabilized
for fifty years (!!!)
bedroom directly across
from the conical turret

of the Museum of Natural History
where Margaret Mead wrote
her letters and her books.
Light from here to there
Is often pink, not just
In the morning, but all day.
My room is a deep orange now.
The colors have changed over
the years (bright yellow, deep
blue, green that was almost
celadon) but the room itself
hasn’t changed much.
Many sentences, a few good
enough, happened here.

Many people walk through
the doors. Sometimes,
I write down what they say.
(Estefano and Nick from
across the hall just stopped in.)

When I moved here my next door
neighbor was Mrs. Israel.
A month before she died, she
called me in for tea. Unlike
anyone else in this building,
she wore a blue Talbot suit,
navy pumps to match.
She served tea in floral china cups.
We had one small biscuit each.
“I have to tell you this,”
she said. “There was never
a Mister Israel. Don’t tell
anyone until I die.”

I waited years to
tell Estefano and Nick.

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THE NEW SAME 3 QUESTIONS…

1. What one word best describes your writing life?

• Spontaneous.

2. Is there a book you’ve read over and over again?

• Grace Paley’s Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.

3. What is your strangest obsession or habit?

• I’ve been collecting found handwritten notes from everywhere for many years. I have a folder of supermarket shopping lists that other people have left behind. Those lists (half and half, lemons, strawberry jam) make a funny series of strangers daily poems.

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By ESTHER COHEN

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