you’re watching in awe as the white trail streaks across a brilliant blue sky, thinking how that teacher astronaut will soon be in space . . .
“What do you usually go by?” she asked. I’m not so sure.
I once swallowed a yellow-striped bee. A yellow-jacket.
I remember it as a snapshot. We were in the kitchen.
Dad was pacing, saying the cops were going to show up and take him away.
Bucharest, 1994. The soup is cabbage and a bone she has boiled three times, the marrow long gone.
Roy had worn too much cologne.
I blew it. My final interview question for The Job.
I’ve never been to Lake Lanier, that infamous body of water in North Georgia named after some racist Confederate soldier.
Lines smacked the mast, tolling a hollow rhythm.
Drawing someone my soul knew a hundred years ago seemed a terrifying ordeal, one that could only be unsatisfying.
Quarteira. The apartment is temporary and still smells of someone else's cooking.
I was thirteen, and it was our first Mother’s Day in America.
After hiking six miles up the Big Sur mountain trail, Bob and I reached our backcountry campsite and found six men sitting around a campfire.
Right outside the entrance, an older woman’s paper bag breaks.
We walked Mission Street, a film reel of landmarked memories illuminated by each car's passing headlights.
The Texas desert was new moon dark, our truck the only thing moving for miles, stars everywhere.
I'm 16, jacketless (youthful vanity), and alone in a car park.
She stares with eyes as blue as mine. Fiercer, though, perhaps.
Seems an extreme reaction but when something goes wrong—like now, the blind chains tangling together—I want to shave all my hair off.