On the morning Ma forgot my name, she remembered everything else: the price of onions in 1998, the exact shade of blue Baba wore the day he proposed, the smell of the sea on her first and only trip to Digha. She stood at the balcony, gripping the railing as if the...
If they ask if we can get a dog, I will tell them to prove to me they can take care of one, but I will neglect to tell them how. I will watch for displays of maturity (doing the dishes without having to be asked, putting their dirty clothes in the laundry room instead...
I recognize the haunt by her milk-shot eyes. She is wolfen this time. Dishonest in death, my sister’s ghost masquerades through the bramble on borrowed claws. She seeks the key to Mother’s garden gate—and the starfall secrets locked inside. Once upon a time, Mother...
The tornado is sexy, sultry, a slut. She sucks up everything in her path. Since she was born, since she touched down seven minutes ago, in a midwestern prairie, she has known her purpose: to consume. To get thick and plump and burst with herself. She flicks her tail...
More helicopters are falling this year. Not the real ones; not yet. These are the papery maple seeds. They float down, spinning on a single feather. They coat the sidewalks, collect in planters, nest in gutters. In the evening, they glow, lit from behind, the sun red...
Oasis Motel 3:06 a.m. Mandy picks shattered bits of windshield out of her arm. Glass fragments glisten red, stark pinpricks against the yellowed porcelain sink. She looks away from the marred counter. Plinks another shard into the basin. The motel room is dark....
He built a house out of wood in which to lose his grief. To fill the house, he stole crumbs from the lips of strangers as their tongues searched their mouths. He stole the sadness floating in the eyes of the bereaved. He stole the darkness inside their clasped hands....
Let’s say dad didn’t beat you because you back-chatted and wore your skirt too short, and you didn’t sneak out to meet Peter, then peck like a bird at our bedroom window at midnight smelling of cask wine and boy. Imagine — you hadn’t woken up lamenting you’d ever been...
Kathy Morris must have been half-bat, half-opossum because no human could hang upside down for so long and not feel funny about it after. She’d flip herself over the monkey bars and chase us back into school like it was no big deal she’d just hung there with her hair...
Seeking a companion. Need not be romantic; platonic is fine. Just someone to wake up to for that morning breath that feels stale with closed-mouth soft snores, and those eyes holding long, floating eyelashes that I want to touch but won’t. Just someone who will empty...
during a 50-minute massage. The grading, the emails, the sunken cold: my mid-back balled into a walnut. At Hand and Stone, a blind masseuse named Homer leads me to a room with prancing emerald lights: hospital sink, mirror from Marshall’s—a franchised underworld....
Capuchin monkeys are named after the monks who are named after the drink or something like that, could be the other way around, so when Sam says that Olivia’s voice is like cappuccino we nod but we don’t really know what it means because none of us have tasted...