(mac)ro(mic)

I came home from work and sat in the sofa we had dragged off the curb a few weeks earlier.  I say ‘in’, rather than ‘on’, because I would sink into it. It was way too big for one person, but not big enough for […]

It gives me great pleasure to share the following six stories, which I’ve just yesterday sent to the Pushcart Press for consideration in next year’s Pushcart Prize selections. Whether you’ve given these pieces a read already or are reading them now for the first time, […]

That morning on the porch, I held my breath—the familiar pressure inside my chest greeting me—then exhaled; the burning tang of nicotine blended with the minted pines across the water, its hanging cloud dissipating as a cool breeze washed over the lake. The smoke singed […]

I was never romantic enough to offer you my umbrella. Of course, where we lived you couldn’t even buy umbrellas for the most part due to the wind. And that isn’t the kind of people that we were. But the point still stands. I wouldn’t […]

It’s gross, really. I should have thrown it out a long time ago. But there it still is, in a plastic Ziploc bag in the bottom of the bathroom drawer at my mom’s house. If you don’t know what it is already, you might not […]

My father begged me to come home.  He told me that he had closed the cellar door, locked it, and thrown away the key.  “It’s over now, it won’t happen again,” he kept repeating over the phone. There was something in his voice that sounded […]

I am not a mercenary–the word infuriates me. Only Asma used to call me so—she paid the price. We’re messengers. This moonless night, I and my people march through the crepuscular streets. Our wooden masks—colored outrageously in reds, dark greens, oranges and black—with bulging eyes […]

On a clear December morning, I park the car amid banks of snow and scurry over a sheet of ice to the dermatology clinic. I am on time for my appointment, but the cold air stings. In the waiting room, the sun streams horizontally through […]

We all laughed at Bubbe’s shoes. Real grandma shoes, well-worn, overworn; a sturdy, slightly thick heel, a nondescript brownish beige, hardly a color at all, tied with a thin shoelace looped through maybe three holes, textured pattern on the sides in a weak design infusion […]

By the time I returned to my hometown, it was dusk, and in the hues of blues, purples, and black, I saw my mother’s beloved garden had withered. Her treasured sunflowers: greyed and hollowed husks. Even the weeping willows I had waltzed with in childhood […]

I am the only girl left on my street. There were four of us. Two tall two short. All a different degree of skin and bone. We were never friends, but we knew each other. In some ways more than most. It is hard to […]

The room where she sits is gray, dull, and pale. Night is falling. And the moon is shining in through the blinds on the back window, casting shadows on the colorless walls. She sits with her back pressing flush against it and she stares at […]