I sit quietly while a friend tells a story from my past. It’s a favor—he’s my surrogate, projecting as I can’t.
Everyone in this story is dead except me.
“If both of us were hangin’ off the side of a mountain, you’d try to save her first.”
A shot glass of pineapple liqueur on my kitchen counter.
The courtroom doors closed but the confrontation wasn't over. Dad wanted to speak with us.
I am 13 and I have a revolver in my hands. I am aiming for a silhouette of a man.
I’d waited at my friend’s funeral to share the poem I’d written about him, the one his wife asked me to read.
They found me my first week of college: a wild-eyed religious group, sure in the knowledge that they were the true Chosen.
I’m on my bike in a red helmet, the Catalinas swallowed by clouds, when I text my ex-husband for the first time in five years: "Our son is turning thirty!”
He’s on the couch opposite me, a cloud of vape smoke hanging between us.
Today, we were reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in our classics class and in the hallway after I try to apply the teachings . . .
The air is filled with the smell of latex, bleached bedding, and cleaner, but I can still smell my own shampoo.
My mother’s voice cracked into a sob, sharp and trembling. “I take care of four kids, you have no idea—”
Standing alone, center stage in the blinding glare of the theater's spotlight, I wasn't nervous.
My mom feeds Buster, a squirrel she named for his busted ear.
We attempt to cross the thick rope hanging over the water. My choice.
I left the oven on, I laughed. 400 degrees for hours.
Both of us were divorced: she had a terrific daughter and an insane beagle; I carried faded dreams.
We’re watching Rudy. It’s my favorite film: Against the odds, an underdog from the wrong side of town gets into Notre Dame to play football.
Every evening, the kettle boiled twice. Once for the tea, and once because she forgot she had already made it.