Our youngest is marrying tomorrow; yesterday the last of my hair fell out, victim of my first chemotherapy treatment.
I hear the nurse gasp quietly and I crane my neck up, following her eyes across the entryway.
She withheld a cupcake from each child, asking, "What do you say?"
The hospital smells fill my nostrils as emergency room personnel rush from one area to another.
I passed the interview. Jade was next. I turned my hands into fists, hoping our practice helped.
Our hands melt together walking the dashed yellow line, wondering who is leading who, when I trip up the curb of Lincoln Ave.
I’m walking in Père Lachaise Cemetery.
I start picking, and I’m picking, leaning in close, climbing the sink, eye-to-eye with myself.
On my projector screen, I Googled “new dictionary words 2016,” clicked the first hit, and resumed my spiel.
I work in a little grocery store with a friend who says my hair is pretty.
An hour after the ventilator was turned off, I was speaking my first words in three weeks.
I always take this bend in the road very carefully.
I'm still in pajamas but you are showered and ready for an appointment.
“Let’s address the elephant in the room,” said the sustainability expert.
“You never know until it’s too late,” my 90-year-old mother says.
All day I've thrashed in bed, pinned like a butterfly to my dreams. When I rise, darkness has fallen.
I asked her over dinner: If I were to change my name, what should I change it to?
“You don’t believe me,” my stricken mother said between sobs.
I flew to Chicago to hold her hand, but when I reached for it, tubes, tape, and a stent were in the way.
In the cramped kitchen, country ballads drift from the RCA on the counter.