My brain has been injured and is not working properly. I appear to be asleep, dead even… but of course, I’m right here. Hovering. The frenzy, shouts, rushing… all for what—I’m not coming back. I begin to relax, breathe, take in my surroundings. Roger is […]
“Is this something that people do?” Jet asked. “Go on trail rides at night?” Jet wasn’t the first boy I’d kissed, but he was the first boy I wanted to kiss again. His breath smelled like the beer he’d drank earlier at the party. He’d […]
A January blizzard brawls outside the studio window. Like the weather, my thoughts churn. Hands firm on the clay, elbows locked and braced against my inner thighs, I close my eyes and lean in. Gently, I press the foot pedal, and the wheel spins. In […]
Auntie Liu glanced at the door every few minutes. The food in the baby bowl still sat untouched. Each morning, she cooked chicken breasts and ground the meat until the crumbs were no bigger than her fingernails. She put a full bowl at the corner […]
CW: self harm, suicide Eliot lights the votive candle, then immediately blows it out. The gun-shot of his breath ricochets off the stone walls of the church until it finds a way out and vanishes. He lights the candle again, blows it out again, […]
Uniformed men with shotguns patrolled the entrances to the American Embassy in El Salvador. They were likely children of the Salvadoran civil war, now grown, who were over-familiar with violence and death. The pre-dawn darkness suited them. My husband and I approached the crowd of […]
Jolene sleeps with her back toward me, never faces me anymore. Makes sure she goes to bed way before or after me, says that she’s tired or that she can’t sleep. I feel her body radiating heat—my little furnace, I try to joke—but there’s a […]
Papa’s got me waiting in the car. He’s taking me to Nanna’s cause Momma’s screaming makes me scream and Papa says he can’t think like that. Momma slipped in the shower and is hurt. Papa is taking care of her and she’ll be alright. But […]
Culture Shock Settling into our new Floridian life was no easy feat considering Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was all my family had ever known. My father took up a job at Regal & Nautique Orlando as a boat service technician while my mother […]
Don’s gloves are useless. He fell hands first into a stream five miles back. Water entered the gloves. Now they are frozen. He can barely grasp his walking poles. “We need to make camp. I’ve had it, my hands have had it.” His voice is […]
We live near the naval air base where the Hindenburg went down, fell to pieces like a flaming piñata. Sometimes planes fly so low they shake the pictures on the walls, make them slip to show the holes I’ve hung them over. I don’t know […]
Little Compton, late fall: Fern escapes from the clove and nutmeg of her mother’s house. She leaves the car near a pasture where bay mares graze in patches of sun. Across the dirt road, through a small park dense with maple and oak and advancing […]
