I'm logging hours for payroll when a child approaches, her eyes fixated on my hands as she extends her own, palms hidden of course.
On a beautiful fall day, the sirens sang of a coming tornado.
Alone in the house, hormones firing, I prioritize a moment of self pleasure.
Dad’s funeral cortege gave way at the junction when a recycling collection lorry went past.
As I sift through her collection of letters, a pink card catches my eye.
I rush over to my panicked coworker with wadded napkins and apply pressure to her bloody finger.
I get Jaimie to the bathroom before she can vomit all over my new jeans, but she misses anyway—our price for being drunk and seventeen.
She took out her mixing bowl and spoons. Found the right size baking pan and then lined up all the ingredients.
Errands with Mom ended with her new hairdo, and we went to Burger Chef, a rare treat.
I clutch the radio, twisting the antenna rapidly back and forth, back and forth.
She's in the hospital when my son draws on the kitchen floor in permanent marker, a sprawling battlefield of stick figures with swords.
Assume competence, they drill into parents, but that is always easier said than done.
“More grounds came out than beans went in,” he yawns as if everyone performs groggy pre-dawn miracles.
I live behind a graveyard.
When twelve, I spent two weeks of summer in Mexico with botanists—a grad student, Dad, maternal grandparents—a collecting trip of mosses, with an earthworm dissertation sideline.
I was staring at a dwindling campfire.
The sun was relentless and we were restless.
“I have to pee,” I said.
My apartment is full. Crudité and cheese platters clutter the coffee table, all available chairs sag with grief.
If I could, I’d ask you what it meant.