When you approach the bridge, you will hear her moans. The teenagers go to Dead Woman’s Crossing, in search of love and destruction. It’s darker there, on this church hayride night. Flatbed truck with wooden benches and a scattering of hay. Driver crawls to the spot...
A box sits broken down across my lap. I slide out of the car into the garage and slip the box behind the tool bench—it’s there with nine other empty boxes. Dozens more pile up around me. My husband says it’s time to get rid of my collection. They’re not hurting...
We flush my sister’s goldfish down the toilet at three in the morning. She says the poor creature suffered a lot due to a condition inherent in all fish past twenty. I hold the flashlight, its beam stuttering over scales. The fish’s eyes look small, like black seeds....
First, she cradled it like a child, then put it between her legs and galloped like a horse, next slung it over her shoulder like a rifle, and she stood at attention, the leg at the ready. The leg was more than she had intended to take. So greedy, she chastised. Until...
because the tightness the itch the stiff rectangle smothering us. Because eyes bore when mouth and nose hide. Because micro mold, the uglies. Didn’t get vaccinated because— well duh. Didn’t quarantine because we’re all God’s children except those who aren’t. We didn’t...
Blackout I walked into the theatre halfway through the performance. The ushers were all on their phones, and no one stopped me. All the way down the aisle, in the dark, I dragged a heavy-duty black garbage bag filled with things he had left behind in my apartment....
The first time the house swallowed a sound, we blamed the insulation. A penny fell from your fingers, flashed once, and never landed. By June, the kitchen had gone almost entirely mute. A plate could burst across the linoleum without a crack. We learned to live by...
1. The Ghost of Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath is tired of things, but we have trapped her inside our minds, and we want more. She did her part, and she performed, but we are greedy, and we clap and cheer and stamp our feet for an encore, because she left too soon. Sylvia...
What you leave out, when you tell the police about it, is how the woman reminded you of your mother—charismatic and brash, with short-cropped black hair greying at the temples. The woman had dark eyes that flashed when music played, and she drummed her fingers against...
I hang my shadow on the clothesline like a sheer, limp solar panel. After dancing beside me all night long, it needs a sun-washed nap. The steel-colored version of me descends into dreams slowly, like that violin quartet that played on, as the Titanic French kissed...
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...