I sit on the idling school bus, knitting a scarf and waiting for the other students to board so we can all go home, but the head that appears at the front of the bus belongs to my father, not a fellow student.
I sit on the idling school bus, knitting a scarf and waiting for the other students to board so we can all go home, but the head that appears at the front of the bus belongs to my father, not a fellow student.
I have always been a stickler for meticulous preparation and planning, perhaps dating back to my Boy Scout days or maybe just a product of my OCD.
I thought being bullied by girls I used to consider friends was bad.
You find me in a pile of katanas and kimonos, browsing the sake cups we’ll toast your 21st birthday with.
I bounce the ball downcourt, shift left, then right, dribble the ball from one hand to the other. The noise of the crowd fills my head, my muscles tense, but I press on.
My bare knees on the rough sidewalk, my hand to his shoulder, I’m shouting, “Hey mister, take a breath!”
I watch you paint a childhood picture for your grandchildren, different from the one I remember.
Already I miss the three-year-old cyclone blasting from room to room, a jaunty ponytail streaming behind her.
The afterlife of our relationship is sprinkled with ash. I’ve started smoking to keep my lips busy.
Three texts. Nine words. "The baby died. I’ve miscarried. There was no heartbeat."
During my three-year-old daughter Daisy’s eight-hour transplant surgery, I imagined lying beside her on the operating table whispering, “Mommy loves you.”
I was sitting in the car when the phone rang. The caller I.D. made me pick up.
I comb through her closet, a history of her body and life before dementia and heart failure.
While surfing the web I came across a painting titled Island of Shells. It reminded me of Barbados, my birth island.
I’m staring at your hands. You’re using them to clarify medical words; to make shapes; to draw diagrams to help me understand what my brain can’t make sense of …
It’s 1969, somewhere in Alaska, my first time on sentry duty for the United States Air Force; the middle of a December night, thirty degrees below zero, a guard shack in front of a nuclear weapons dump site.
Months after my 37-year-old husband dies, I discover the borrowed Vivaldi album tucked among our other LPs.
The steel guardrail familiar against his knees. The straight, level bridge concealing its loftiness, the gorge below indistinct in the moonlight. [CW: suicidal ideation]
Desperate, I tell Alexa, “Play some music.” Truth Hurts by Lizzo comes on.
Tantrum. We've dealt with her public meltdowns for years.