(mac)ro(mic)

Our eyebrows were already weird by the time we met. We were not new, but we had not been waiting, either. We came trailing wedding rings, dildos, mortgages, baby bottles, prom dresses, surgical histories, seltzer makers, dead transmissions, at-home injection kits, rosary beads, old photographs […]

Limestone country, where the quarry growls in heat thunder over the fields: we’re driving to find the place Dad wanted his ashes interred. Tonight Mark and I bring the boys to a cabin so quiet we can hear the electric lines of the high pylons […]

Once upon a time, there was a mother and her son. They took the day to go to lunch, to a restaurant they had never been to before, yet had been wanting to try for ages. He was going to try french fries for the […]

Five. Grandfather teaches me how to hold a butterfly without crumpling its wings. He raises his red sweater arms high above his head and tells me to wait. The early July morning is humid. I rock between my feet, sweating and impatient. One butterfly sits […]

Time is a motherfucker. Time wears a belt of iron. But Arden’s words fall up. The sun a tickled curtain. She touches the throat of God. There is no God. She takes out the trash. The trees whisper: Victory is false. My heart is a […]

The time my Mom stayed home from work three days in a row, singing church hymns while rocking in Grandma’s old chair, holding me tight, to claim me back from the devil. The night she ran out the front door into the dusk screaming that […]

3:30 PM The faded reflection of your own face in your laptop screen as you sit in the passenger seat typing outside of your daughter’s elementary school. As you approach the words that you need, as you change the tense, change the tension by framing […]

I wanted to lick the small of her back, to taste the fuzz of her skin and bite into it like a ripe peach.   I wanted to become so close with her that we would become one person, that her pain would be mine and […]

I am struggling to get the credit card out of my small coin purse when she says it. I pause blankly before looking up at her behind the counter. The rich maroon wall of the café highlights her bronze cheeks and extends her warm smile. […]

We promised that nothing would part us – not even death –  so we stay together after the accident.    We lean our car seats back and listen to music, just like before.  You tell me about your first concert, your first joint, your first high […]

1. Two cars are driving toward one another to go to Ryan’s houseparty. Amy leaves Town A at 9pm traveling at 60 miles per hour. Wes departs Town B at 9:15pm traveling at 70 miles per hour. The distance between Town A and Town B […]

It is in August when the rains fall thickly and your ghost disappears. I am seated on the porch swing, my feet dusting the floorboards, our farm fields overrun and expansive in the distance. I am work-weary, grief-stricken, manifesting moisture of any sort. Our son […]