I always notice when winter arrives, the way it sits squarely on the shoulders of dark cows, the green having dropped into the soil. Weeks before the tree is brought inside, the smooth palm of fog dims the world smaller. Views are given piecemeal. Sounds made by the wild come from a place unseen. Once, an owl dipped in front… Read more →
The docents show the two mediums, a woman and her boyfriend, the coins left on the governor’s writing desk and the turned-over top hat in the lobby. The mediums tread carefully, heel to toe, over dark floorboards. When they rest eyes on the water spot on the ceiling, they give the impression of turning their gaze inwards in search of… Read more →
My husband is not dead, but he is close to it. He drops things, abutting his feet—they nearly destroy what keeps him standing. Hammer and auger, flat sewer rod, plunger, plumber’s torch, pipe wrench, hacksaw. He squeezes his 6-foot, 200-pound frame in a cupboard, under our sink. The drain is clogged. “It’s your hair,” he says. “It sits here until… Read more →
1. People who live near the ocean become accustomed to its moods, its temper tantrums, its contentment. They are willing to forgive the bodies of decaying fish and green-turned-brown seaweed that wash up on its shores and swelter in the summer humidity. They are willing to forgive because soon the ocean will be calm and blue. The sunlight will make… Read more →
Mindy offers to come. Husband offers to watch our kids. Mom offers to help. She and Dad haven’t been in the same room since Josh’s bris six months ago. Dad tried to murder himself three months ago. By that I mean: he stabbed himself in the chest in the front seat of his powder-blue Mercedes. I suspect Mom views him… Read more →
With a pack of camping gear, John rode buses north to find tunnels and talked to the people living inside them. Showing the trending TikTok video of “Tunnel Woman,” as well as old family photographs, John asked if anyone had seen his aunt. He was certain that Tunnel Woman was his aunt, but he only recognized her eyes in the… Read more →
The monarch’s wings pulse against my palm—its black veins like cracks in stained glass. Terminal, the doctor said yesterday. Six months, maybe less. Words that fell like stones into still water. Mother collected butterflies. Not with nets and pins, but with her Nikon. “Never capture beauty,” she’d say. “Just witness it.” I was seven when she photographed her last migration—thousands… Read more →
Don’t lump Fay in with all those mee-maws and moo-moos and whatnot, alright? She sends her recipes to Ole Time Favorites magazine because they pay fifty dollars. But she wishes they’d put a big fat asterisk by her name and write, “nobody’s Gran.” The gals at church talked Fay into it. Said she’s got the touch. Who else would think… Read more →
It’s now understood that they were released when a small iceberg calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. But interviews from December 7, 2046, are consistent, it felt like they just appeared. A boy onboard the Borealis Expedition, a voyage for the filthy rich to touch the last penguin, spotted them first. He took a picture because they looked like clouds trapped… Read more →
#1 Their transformations are always unexpected You have come to me for chaste conversation, your hands steepled like a church. It is what women do after all, talk and pray. Why has the skim of satin over your hips caused a salt tide in me? Your hands ripple the fabric like unplumbed depths. What is it you want to tell… Read more →