One morning, as I stood at the bus stop waiting for the 7:05, my neighbor, Horowitz, drove over my left foot with his butter-colored Volvo. I shouted. I shook my fist. Then I limped home to show my wife, Myrna. I’ve had a long history of bearing tread marks, so my...
She begins each morning by peeling the dead skin off her lips. Sometimes, she feels like she is shucking corn and other times, she feels like she is unwrapping a present, but mostly, she enjoys the aloneness that allows her this ritual, this tiny indelicacy. She...
I drove to the county hospital to pick up my mother. She was not as I suspected. They handed her to me in a Tupperware bowl, her spotted tail flicking behind her. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said to the bored nurse in glasses behind the desk. “There’s...
The pretty cowgirl’s mouth is wild with tameless laughter, and the tassels on her calfskin miniskirt and waistcoat dance to her every move. Standing astride the centre line between four traffic lanes, gun belt and holsters sparkling in the car lights, she aims her...
Spirits. Toria doesn’t speak German, but no language is necessary. Her voice melodious with children or men, she tilts her head and orders our drinks. Gin-tonic, always. Lights sweep the room, shading us ocean-deep. The barman leans in and whispers in her...
Kate knew it would not work with Ethan when she watched him remove the thinly sliced circles of candied lemon she had carefully arranged on top of the cake. He piled the peels on the side of his plate, mouth puckered, before driving his fork into the now unadorned...
# Freddie goes missing overnight on a Sunday. That week is a blur of search parties and candlelight vigils, porch lights on in such abundance that the nights are as bright as day. We rake the cornfields in regiments of two dozen, flattening the farmland. Deputies...
That July, all our dreams were bones. T-rex bones, kneecap bones, bones larger than our house, bones of a dinosaur yet to be discovered that we’d name banopolis peelopolis so we could laugh when archeologists said it on the Discovery Channel. We were ravenous for...
The paper clips look like angels if you bend them a certain way. We wear them reverently or as reverently as seventh-grade girls can. Pinned to our collars, in remembrance of the popular boy who died: Our tiny office-supply seraphim. Maggie was dating him for two...
In this future, my mistakes as a parent—the ones my friends told me not to beat myself up about—they make a difference. They’re the first divots of trauma in Melody’s soon-to-be-totaled-out soul. I can hold her attention for a few brief years with watercolors and pipe...
A new pair of underwear arrives in the mail on the 14th of every month. The subscription service delivers on their promise, and the hip-huggers, thongs, and French-cut briefs are as beautiful as they are comfortable. This month’s pair is very good. Bikini cut, pale...
I pick up stuff. Things others left behind. Scarves, mittens, dollar bills, pens, rings. And I cannot describe what it feels like to carry these things around. A month ago, in a crowded bus, I was standing behind a girl with a gym bag, and I noticed her deodorant...