The heater blasted out its eighty-degree setting and I was still shivering. A record cold they say, but in Chicago, it was hard to believe that a day in history could be colder than today. Everything thermal from my socks… Continue Reading
Our Volvo SUV awaits as we butter toast, shuffle plates of eggs. I hurriedly book a massage, text my oldest daughter’s violin tutor right before the shoot begins. What the photographer sees: an impeccably dressed Japanese woman surrounded by three… Continue Reading
AYE MIO AMICO, who could say a train is not the most beautiful class of vehicle? She come this one from the mountains, where still some snow shows on her roof. Step up with me on the bell and compare… Continue Reading
My date is burly and gruff, a lumberjack squeezed into a French blue polo and wing-tips. He fumbles through the menu with giant hands. A white scar cuts from his left nostril down to his upper lip. He notices me… Continue Reading
There were scales in the bathroom. Shell looked to the two blue towels already hanging with their limb-shaped patches of damp. Her dad and stepmother had had their showers already, and Shell felt two speeds in her heart. They had… Continue Reading
Her father, gulping his whisky, insisted the three puppies remain outside because “there is nothing cute about stepping in shit.” No one in the neighborhood saw the mother of the tiny dogs and most presumed she was dead. Some saw… Continue Reading
After our closing, mail intended for the prior owners continued to arrive. At my wife’s suggestion, we hand printed “return to sender” and dropped the letters in the blue collection box near the Panera. The junk—the flyers, directories, advertisements—we tossed.… Continue Reading
Walking in, I wing my arms and strum the strings that line the walls. Dan’s racked his guitars by resonance, tinny to golden. Discordant yet beautiful, jangles the hum, like a gateway to limbo. I’ve suggested he tune them to… Continue Reading
Home is where the heart is. That’s the saying my mother liked, cross-stitched and hung in the hallway. Now I wonder—if I don’t have a home, am I heartless? I was on the move, deciding to sleep in a real… Continue Reading
I rented the same beach house as the one we vacationed at fourteen years ago. That was the last summer for the five of us, the one before the children began disengaging from Tyler and I. The one of our… Continue Reading