“…a story, Mommy!” “In a house in the woods, far far away, three bears were living. “The father bear was big and tall with a big booming voice and big hard hands.” “Bears don’t have hands! They have paws!” “But… Continue Reading
Arles, France. September, 1888. Dusk fades, but still some blue clings in the darkening sky in which the first stars seem to boil overhead. I like twilight. It is calming to me. Doctor L’Enfant says I should like calming things.… Continue Reading
Maternity wards are noisy places by nature and Dr. Barnes had no desire to add to tonight’s cacophony by arguing for a C-section his patient didn’t want. The delivery room, buzzing with a small sisterhood of girlfriends, one dumbstruck husband,… Continue Reading
I’d tell it this way: In that place, at a parallel moment, a troop of His Royal Vileness’s cavalry reached a village, poor but beautiful, looking for girls with the same attributes. His Wretchedness desired a new toy. There, ice-clear… Continue Reading
With his wife away, Danny ate dinner at the Gray Moose, a classic dark-wood pub. He signaled to a waiter for another beer. “Sure thing, Mr. McGowan.” With that, an attractive dark-haired woman sitting at the bar near his table… Continue Reading
Alex stood on the edge of a rooftop fifteen stories high, staring at an exit sign that led to nowhere. His unlit cigarette was perched precariously between his lips, momentarily forgotten. He walked around the exit sign, looking at it… Continue Reading
Raheel’s mother Parveen was unmatched for stubbornness but even she crumbled before fate. Yes, she said — the words like a scorpion on her tongue — find a Masood girl for my son. Her sisters had cunningly given birth to… Continue Reading
We walk up and down in the pool. We talk a lot. She in her lane. Me in mine. Other people swim around us. We exchange pleasantries. Progress to intimacies. I’ve had a heart attack. She’s had breast cancer. She’s… Continue Reading
The sink had been drinking again, Momma told me. She threw the empty bottle into the garbage and it clinked against the other bottles. That was always when Pa got mad, storming around the house, yelling and smashing things. Black… Continue Reading
Once upon a time, long ago, when bees were flowers and flowers had knees, there lived a group of primordial squash in a wide field near a stream under the star-riddled sky. There were other groups of squash around, mixed… Continue Reading