The pool was four feet deep, and we bought it at Target half off. You could float on your back and think, “fun times are here,” because at least you weren't burning hot. Mom and I watched it fill up with hose water. She looked around at the back yard, the neglected...
These pieces have been chosen because the writer has done something special with sense of place. They’ve eliminated the need for a distinction between foreign and familiar. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen that place, been to that spot. You know this place...
I'm looking for the way it feels to stand behind doors sliding shut on a train to Ikebukuro and you bow goodbye to me from the platform and I bow to you. I am on my way to that monster cafe we loved, where the slippers they gave us were fuzzy and green with small...
Yonder Years Ago So down a synapse they tunneled, carried past sensation burdens: memory waves chute-oscillated, irrigated crevices and canals to harvest minds and remember electric journeys in flashes and sparks. Disconnected and torn, hand-in-hand they went,...
I forget where I stumbled across your Twitter account (or when for that matter). But I do remember being struck immediately with how many emotions you were able to convey in such short word count, particularly within your Twitter stories. You have such a knack for...
The rifle leans by the cabin door. The gray window is cold to the touch. The mother sucks something from her thumb as she sets out the toast rack, her bare toes curling to grip the woven rug. Her nails have gotten quite long. The girl comes down the stairs, nodding...
Punch Me he tells his son. It’s okay. You need to learn. Tenderly, the father kneels, and the boy makes a four-year-old fist, aims for the broad chest, tensed and squared and fleshier than the father remembers himself. Little knuckles against aging skin. A slapping...
It takes thirty years for my older sister to swim here from the Pacific coast. She no longer has vocal cords or letters on her mind. Instead, she blinks rapidly. Raises a pale webbed hand out of the breeze-ruffled water. I know exactly what she means. She doesn’t...
CW: kidnapping But we were so young and our parents were hippies, and our music came from the garage band up the street that played Wild Thing over and over because it was the only song they knew, and it was summertime and the only rule was to come home before dark,...
The birds only come once a year. Always on my birthday, just as I’m blowing my age into candle smoke and choking down a sliver of over-sweetened cake because my mom came home early from work to bake it and she gets mad when I don’t eat. But the birds are back, which...
You and Lisa tried to save your marriage by taking some community education classes. Intro to Pottery started in March, Beginning Scuba was slated for May. “Maybe learning new things will rekindle our love,” you told her. “Maybe learning new things will prove our...
So sudden you didn’t have time to put your hair on. So loud your eardrums hurt. Who are these people who have stormed into your kitchen? Why does the woman loot your cupboards, the man produce a knife? The woman’s voice reminds you of your daughter’s, but your...