On line at ShopRite, the plump woman behind me, lifting a package of pickled beets from my cart, asks “Are these any good?”
“Daddy, twirl!” our five-year-old daughter squeals the first time she sees them wearing a dress.
“Five minutes remaining!” is the shout of my coach as the workout hits the home stretch.
She is like a rosebush in her long dress of bold pink and red flowers.
Every morning, my daughter spritzes them with her purple spray bottle decorated with mermaid stickers.
I missed my period, I tell him. His wide eyes betray hope.
On the hot Upper West Side, I was rising from traumas’ ashes.
My condo overlooks a school parking lot. Occasionally, a car arrives, cones are placed, and a teenager slides into the driver’s seat.
The ceiling fans swayed; the beds jiggled.
My youngest is the first to call it. “The mom is going to die.”
Everyone is speaking French. She tries a few words, but her new mother-in-law cuts her off.
Each Christmas was the same as the previous one.
I stand on the hillside and watch under hot sun. “Take your marks.”
It’s eight in the morning. It feels so odd being the only passenger in the car.
A tiny, blank scrap of paper is my most cherished love letter.
Every weekday morning, a small group of children bustles out of the building across the street with two or three adults ushering them safely to the bus stop.
I became an unreliable narrator when I insisted on going.
My roommate and I come home tipsy in heels and short dresses, tossing purses on the couch and heading to the kitchen for something to soak up the alcohol.
It was my grad advisor’s birthday but I’d forgotten, too busy running experiments to think of anything other than my project.
Kindergarten “show-and-tell” day.