The parade of black, casseroles, gluey eyes, and lilting words ended. The house was silent and heavy, like a concrete fog seeping into each crevice and nook. “Is mom going to be ok?” my sister asked. “Yes,” I lied. Mom roamed the halls, looking for […]
I began with a platitude. “James was one of the best people I knew.” That was always a good place to start, right? I swallowed and shuffled the papers in my hands. Of course, I had the whole eulogy memorized; I had practiced at least […]
It starts after she begins her new job working in the plant nursery, one month after you move in. You like how sexy she looks: hips shimmying, fingers tying apron strings in a bow behind her back. Inside the greenhouse, the heat is sweltering. There’s […]
They come in drunk, trying not to make too much noise stumbling through the dark single-wide. They think I’m asleep but I am only pretending. I was up right before I saw the headlights sweep across the fake wood paneling of the living room walls. […]
I honestly can’t believe I made it this far. I cannot believe that I’ve been walking for 25 miles. I can hardly believe I made it past mile 14 to begin with. I don’t really remember why I started walking, I vaguely remember that it […]
My father brought home a Cornish Cross Chicken the Friday before Christmas. He didn’t ask my mother if she wanted to raise a chicken. He was not a man who asked his wife anything. Sometimes, I wondered if he spoke to her at all. The […]
All through my childhood, my mother settled once a day to chronicle her life. Her diaries were factory-made, squarish, embossed with the year on the cover, the date printed onto the page, thin lines regulating the number of words allowed for emotions, events—no more, no […]
I lost my hat on my eighteenth birthday. It was a warm April, fierce blue sky, flaming sun, the wind whooshing past the palms searing them like my mother’s sighs. My hat was a thing of beauty. Woven straw, mellow gold with a midnight blue […]
It’s that fox again, the one with the limp. My dream always begins with it walking away until the setting sun swallows its orange and black fur. I wake up with wet eyes and a thirst deep and rough as a dry well. I probably […]
I have a hard time imagining four pairs of ample feet draping out beneath a blanket’s edge. My grandfather was the oldest of twelve; my mother, of eight. Both were reared under one roof, in a rural town on something like a farm, selling something […]
Nick’s father demands truth, yet he also dissects truths. You’re selfish, weak. Why did you choose writing? Why not some other major? Come home, serve your father. He demands the minutiae of Nick’s life. He needs to know what he excretes, what he drinks and […]
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 […]
