The house weathered two hurricanes: one blew away, and the other, my mother-in-law, lived there. Last summer, she and my father-in-law readied the house for sale, and they invited my husband Anton and me to sift through the books in their library. I could not help but compare the process to the emptying of my parents’ home, which had been… Read more →
My sister sits cross-legged on the bottom bunk and lays out a game of solitaire, batting my hand away when I reach out to straighten a card. We’re fresh from a turn at the showers, but our skin and hair still smell of caramel corn and roasted meat. We hear our mother outside, laughing with the other concessions ladies—she knows… Read more →
We told Bill we only wanted to see him. He called on our way up to his house. I sipped on a homemade smoothie. My other hand was on the wheel. I had one brown banana leftover from the smoothie this morning at home and I put it in the freezer before I left. M52, the route to Perry, is… Read more →
At the abandoned Air Force base, we walk through crumbling military houses. Vines crawl through the windows of nineteen-fifty style bathrooms. I feel as though a vacuum has been applied to my chest, like the air has been sucked from my body into the void. You wander over glass shards and moldering linoleum floors, your posture in a perpetual shrug…. Read more →
When the phone rang so late at night at her parents’ house, Angie knew it had to be relatives—either her father’s in India or her mother’s in Baltimore. From her perch at the top of the stairs on the second floor, she heard that it was her mother’s people: a cousin Elizabeth saying that Aunt Pina, her mother’s sister, died… Read more →
Love me some thunder but not when it threatens to crack open the delicate shell of my wedding day to Tootie Miller. Tootie, all swag-haired and sparkletooth and me, my belly full of Tootie’s kid, five months round by now. When Tootie proposed after six years of on and off and other women and then floating back to me, it… Read more →
I worked at the Speedway in Orlando, a race car themed restaurant. Blue Sunoco leaded gasoline pumps on either side of the entrance. A Red Lion Gilmore pump by the restrooms. Motor oil drums transformed into gleaming seats in the cocktail lounge. Sheet metal walls with wavy images of a Bluebird V, a Stanley Steamer. Race car drivers in caps,… Read more →
At dusk the crows crowd in, black clouds swarming to beeches stripped of leaves above a creek nearly drained by summer’s heat. A pickup with a farmer and his son pulls up beside me. Some cattle got out of their pen, but, except for one lone calf still loose, the others followed the lowing home. The radio reported this morning… Read more →
During the hailstorm, we were pelted by thick crystalline balls like when my favourite necklace broke, beads dancing on the kitchen floor, and I dared you to grab me like that again; one time too many.
I held a newborn yesterday; I rubbed his purple, downy skin with clean, white towels under the heat lamp until he cried and pinked up. Others came over then—doctors, nurses, and there were these medical students who didn’t know what to do with their hands. I elbowed all of them out of the way. I sang to the baby and… Read more →