Shivering from bloodloss and fasting, she lies on white sheets—the monster, razor-tongued, cold-eyed, who darkened my childhood, who binds me still.
My mother gazes across the kitchen table toward my father’s empty chair.
At seventeen, I had not yet bloomed, had barely been kissed.
It’s just after 11 and already over a hundred degrees and this lady is kneeling by the iguana on this hotass parking lot ...
After walking through tulip-filled Windmill Island, this tired-looking family is about to leave when the older woman in the group stops ...
I bounce the tennis ball, one, two, three times.
When my daughter totters to me for the first time, I’m delighted. But at the Butterfly House, I realise she can walk away too.
Four years since I've seen my sister in person, and four months since I've seen my mom—or anyone—without a mask.
It is hot enough that the smallest of baby hairs stick to your neck, but the breeze picks up and the beer is cold.
My left eyelid convulses, writhes, jitters like a rabbit’s twitching nose as it hops towards lettuce.
My OB was out, so her sub answered my midnight call.
I stopped by the liquor store on my lunch break and saw him standing beside a display of pineapple ale.
It was our first date and I was fifteen minutes late.
Thwack! Another bird strike.
On my walk I approach a group of kids who are waiting for the school bus.
One afternoon in the early 1970s our family got takeout from McDonald’s.
We were a dozen teenagers determined to fulfill an ancient tradition.
The house was in chaos: a dozen six-year-olds like myself shrieking, shoving, leaping amongst balloons, paper streamers, and spilled M&M’s.
The nurse wheeled our child away and my husband held the wall up so he would not crumble.
Frustrated, I slow my pace as the wind whips the words from my ears.