“The air on Mars—what there is of it—is leaking away,” he said. “About half a pound a second sputtering into space. P-p-poof. Stripped away by solar winds.” He was still in bed reading a NASA report in the Sunday New York Times. It was a month since she’d moved into...
●Suit jacket and pants. White shirt. ●Brown knit tie, too narrow, too long. ●Pocket square, folded and stapled into shape. ●Battered Florsheim...
Unsecured in the back seat, I stretched my legs out where my sibling usually sat next to me, preaching about personal space, railing on how much I needed to grow up, give them some room, goddamn it. I’d kicked off my shoes like always, and as the good old country, not...
“The letter opener?” I said to my husband in the middle of the night. “I panicked,” he said, rolling the letter opener between his fingers by his side as if it would disappear. There was a fire next door, but we lived in a rowhome, so there might as well have been a...
But now there are only two brothers and one moon. At the end of my seven-day shift, I hang the blue lantern on my remaining brother’s door. His whole family is awake, to welcome me back and crater him with goodbyes, and the children smell like creosote, like they’ve...
Her name was on the Literature of Mathematics & Economics conference roster, attendee badge plucked from the folding table by the time I arrived. The absence of a nametag confirmed her physical presence, hovering nearby. I wasn't playing that game again. Ancient...
Monday I am reading to Emmeline a story about a man who had no DNA. He had severe radiation damage to his internal organs, this man, a nuclear power plant technician. His immune system was gone, the story says. His DNA couldn’t rebuild itself. With blood in his tears,...
My husband owns a German bisque doll from the late 1800s. Her name is Clarisa. She has delicate blonde curls that frame her porcelain face and glass blue eyes, both of which my husband polishes every morning with baby wipes gripped in shaking hands. Clarisa came with...
Her head was found perpendicular to the lake. The sight almost eventuated a myocardial infarction, that’s a heart attack to you and me. An elderly man walking his dog or being walked by him made the grim discovery. She had always been the bird refusing to fly in...
All winter, Grandpa seems frailer, like he’s entering a final phase. His living room’s cluttered, he hasn’t shaved, and we wonder if he’s remembering to brush his teeth. When he says goodbye, watching us put on our boots, his blue eyes blur, jelly candies softening...
Mother says her voice is a visitor in the theater of her throat. The play must not be splendid, she says, because many characters—the woman with the crooked hat, the man who looks like he has two bellies, the couple in love stuck together like flower petals in the...
After twenty-five years and an hour of cash bar drinks, the ballroom-sized venue is stuffed with chatter and assessment. From classmate to classmate, you listen to the stories fat with nostalgia or self-regard, all of them rooted in achievement. You nod and smile and...