I was sitting at the bar with my supervisor, Maggie, still the prettiest person I’ve ever known. Our elbows rested on the counter, arms like toothpicks holding up tired heads, drinks tucked beneath our chins. We spun those tiny black… Continue Reading
It is somewhere in North India, the kind of place with endless dusty roads that lead to villages with no name. Sleepy pockets that are hours from anywhere. Now it’s full of uniformed men, and machines digging, lifting, dragging. No… Continue Reading
“Don’t worry. This won’t hurt,” he says and grins at the old lady’s stony face. Sonny makes the Y-shaped incision from shoulder to shoulder and down to the pubic bone. Smooth as slicing warm butter. The layers of fat and… Continue Reading
I looked at the green glow of the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. Someone was thumping on the back door. My husband was away on a week-long trucking haul. So it was just me and my two daughters… Continue Reading
There is no reality beyond the one which lies in that momentary form which we succeed in conferring upon ourselves, upon others, upon things -Luigi Pirandello As the remnants of your dream slip away, you wake up thinking about oranges—specifically… Continue Reading
It started on the third Tuesday after the funeral. I was slicing apples for my school lunch, and the dog, Ravi, sat by the door, watching. He always watched me, but that day, he did it differently. Not like a… Continue Reading
You are ten years old and a fly zips around you and you scream that it’s a bee. You cover your head and scream and scream until your mother swats the fly against the wall and it falls, dead. She… Continue Reading
Jim was thick as old-growth timber, and Camerin danced around something while he hung his work shirt in the mudroom. I had no faith he’d catch what she was trying to say. None. Jim had to meet the crummy at… Continue Reading
I decided what to do with the doll. I’d leave it on a train. Any train would do. I picked the last one that night; the one heading to Greensborough. It would be almost empty. I’d put the doll on… Continue Reading
Everything we had in the Emirates fit into seventeen cardboard boxes. I rifled through them, pulling my bra from the box marked Important Documents, while vintage Rosenthal china clinked inside Toys. On arrival at the top-rated Airbnb in Sharjah, the… Continue Reading