A nurse unplugs me from something. Aggie bites her lower lip. Our son and daughter and their spouses look ready to cry. Even my oh-so-world-weary teenaged grandson swallows hard. If I could, I’d whisper, “Rosebud.” Anything to lighten things up.… Continue Reading
Samantha etched the white oak onto her hand and arm: her wrist and forearm the trunk, her fingers the branches, fingertips the leaves, and on her palm the date and our initials. She wrote our first kiss inside her upper… Continue Reading
Ivan uses the L.A. Daily News as a placemat because his wife – rest her soul – once told him it is easier to throw out a stained newspaper than to wash a stained placemat. He prefers the obituary section;… Continue Reading
“What if I cheated on you?” Hattie always came at Tom with wild scenarios: what if you found a prettier girlfriend, what if I cheated on you, what if there’s a nuclear winter and the survival of humanity depends on… Continue Reading
After the service, everyone came up to console me. Women enfolded me in scented hugs, cooing like so many mourning doves, “Deepest sympathy,” “So sorry for your loss,” and “She’s in a better place now.” The men patted my shoulder… Continue Reading
“I am Taylor,” he assures. My drummer hides beneath her cymbals. My bassist coughs and apologizes to no one specific. The audition flier specifies that our all-girl band, The Four Holsters of the Apocalypse, seeks an eighteen- to nineteen-year-old female… Continue Reading
There is a round man, and every day he drinks three long-necks of Bintang from the same white sun lounge on the black sands of Echo Beach. I monitor him from a subtle five lounges down the row because the… Continue Reading
I stand halfway up red lava tinged cliffs. It’s a wide ledge here. Below me, subdivisions with the remaining orchards scattered among them. In front, the white and grey granite wall. I pull my spray paint out of my pack… Continue Reading
Grandma’s cell phone was full of dead people when I found it. I suppose that’s the way things work out over time, though. I’ve got one in my phone now too, although it wasn’t always like that. It started two… Continue Reading
The day my mom was admitted into the psych ward at Mass General I decided to lose my virginity. I was almost seventeen, and past all romantic notions of sex. It was not my plan from the get-go. I was… Continue Reading