Sy Safransky

Featured Selections One of my favorite pieces in our September issue is Erin McReynolds’s essay “And These Too Are Defensive Wounds,” which details the author’s interactions with the courts following her mother’s murder. McReynolds not only testifies in the original trial, but is requested to do so each time the murderer is up for parole—a difficult revisiting of a traumatic experience.

Somewhere around the thirtieth minute of my argument with longtime Sun contributor Sparrow, my traveling companion—and founder of The Sun—Sy Safransky, excused himself to lie down on Sparrow’s couch. Sparrow and I continued quarrelling without missing a beat. This wasn’t how I’d imagined the trip going.

When my mother died, one of her honey cakes remained in the freezer. I couldn’t bear to see it vanish, so it waited, pardoned, in its ice cave behind the metal trays for two more years. On my forty-first birthday I chipped it out, a rectangular resurrection, hefted the dead weight in my palm. Before it thawed, I sawed, with serrated knife, the thinnest of slices — Jewish Eucharist.