(mac)ro(mic)

I found her father’s footprints outlined in the dew. Retraced those footprints from the grass edging the steps, down the driveway and around the live oaks that shielded our house from the road. I stared at those live oaks. Prayed they wouldn’t whisper what they […]

Your throat burns with the taste of the whiskey on his lips. He is not a whiskey drinker (you know from his cousin’s letters) but in this last year he has developed a taste for it, almost a habit. You cannot say you blame him. […]

Cento from Pull Me Under: A Novel by Kelly Luce   I fell into his arms, crushing the pinecones between us. The world here comes in every shade of green, bushes like limes and trees so dark they’re blue. On his face, I’ve seen what […]

Boyfriend came back to me two months after he left. I thought he’d vanished for good, but things change, my therapist says, people change. He came back, only he was slightly different. His hair was longer, his eyes brownish. I sighed with relief when I […]

I become sad whenever I watch Wheel Of Fortune. Just the other day it happened again–I was watching an episode at the hotel and two of the contestants were winning a good bit of money but the third person, Lena–I believe was her name–just couldn’t […]

My uncle calls my father’s name. “Can he hear me?” my uncle asks me. “Maybe,” I say. “Doctor says it’s one of the last things to go.” Die, Dad, please don’t die. My uncle wants to make it to 90. When he’s almost there, he falls […]

The first time I had sex, I expected that I would, at the very least, cry. It’s easy to make me cry, really — I weep at feel-good stories on the radio and I once had to blink back tears after reading the Wikipedia article […]

Hard Stare   Once, at a coffee shop, I watched a man—a big man, with muscled arms exposed and a hat twisted backwards—dip an animal cracker into his coffee with such concentrated tenderness that my eyes dilated like a lover’s. Outside the window a woman […]

I can’t write. I can’t do it. My therapist suggested perhaps it is because I am, “too happy.” Is that possible? I am happy. Happier than I have ever been. But too happy? Is that a thing? “too happy?” I imagine Sarah Lancashire whilst I […]

When I was growing up, there was a skeleton in my basement. Huddled under the covers in bed, I imagined it clacking together, realigning to its former, living order and climbing up to the second floor. You may imagine the bones as white, but they […]

My hand reached up, far from my small frame, and the ground was unstable. I grasped my father’s hand—all rough and covered in callouses. I couldn’t have been sure that he was there, my eyes had been cast down at the ladybug crawling across my […]

Even now, you are still a peony, all soft sadness and captivating glances and I am bamboo, rigid, tough, sinewy. Bamboo can’t afford to be restless like flower petals because we must bear down and root, even if it’s only rooting in water. My restlessness […]