(mac)ro(mic)

Wollstonecrafted   She keeps the postcard from Universal City, though she’s never been. Acquired at a flea market, the image of a towering man dressed as Frankenstein has been stuck on the fridge in every rental she’s had since she lost the baby in ‘98. […]

I was dreaming about the fire again. The rich, nutty fragrance of linseed oil and its odd companion – turpentine. A smell I used to love but which now terrifies me. I see it then, the crackling fire crawling towards me with flames licking at […]

The console table is more than a console table, but you don’t know that yet, not when Ma says you can put it in your bedroom, if you want. It’s only gathering dust in the loft. Pop built the console table for Ma’s eighteenth birthday. […]

Just like I could rely on my older brother William to drink straight from the milk carton back then, I could count on Friend. At 3:00 sharp, Friend, as she told me to call her, would meet me after school to walk me home. After […]

Space Mountain means something more this time, which is saying a lot, considering how much Disney World in general means to me.  Homesick,  a word I worried would worm its way inside me, a disease I was warned about before picking myself up and dropping […]

You and me, babe, against the world. I recite the charm against contagion at the start of every neighbourhood walk. As my husband and I leave the yard, I reach for his hand and say the words. If I forget, he stops on the sidewalk […]

After Dad leaves for another drinking session, my older sister Nancy and I look for snack money under ripped sofas and Dad’s second-hand futon, which smells like sweat and stale feet. I’m thirteen, she’s sixteen.  We dig beneath every cushion, craning our necks. We look […]

For a moment in my life, I was scared of everything. I was spending the summer in France. Using money I should have been saving for a mortgage, or whatever, to live right on the beach and order fish stews every night. I was, to […]

In the haze of twilight, she felt both confident and then, suddenly, at a loss when she tripped over a pile of garbage on Broadway. It was light enough for her to see, but dark enough that in this moment she had been careless, not […]

Herman wanted to meet a normal woman. He hated using the word normal. It seemed so passé, perhaps even bigoted. But all the women he met these days were abnormal. Herman was a patient at Happy Days Assisted Living Center in Ashleyville, Ohio. He was […]

I’m craving barbecue on a Friday, thinking, maybe. I skip filling up and head straight home from work. My car runs on hope alone. Except it doesn’t. It gets all sputtery and weird, forces me to stop at a gas station outside my neighborhood. I put […]

Family Tree   Mother (n.) one who sheds their human form to fully transition into sacrifice; the juxtaposition of widow and youth, never quite finding the right time to be See synonyms: martyr, enemy, friend, stranger, future Father (n.) a myth you don’t quite believe […]