I am hungry because Wendy told me I can’t eat before she draws my blood. My waiting room overlooks the blue Pacific. I had asked Wendy several times if I could come to visit her here, but she was evasive… Continue Reading
The AV system is still on, showing a YouTube video of the Vietnam Draft lottery from 1969. Slips of paper pulled from a bowl. A series of unlucky birthdays. You ask the students: do you hear your birthday? “Raise your… Continue Reading
Two summers ago, Mom and I flew to Chicago, where Aunt Cathy had lived for years. Mom’s only sibling was younger, twenty pounds lighter, single, and obsessed with cosplay. Cathy traveled to comic book conventions, Renaissance Faires, and movie premieres.… Continue Reading
Shotgun in hand, I inch toward the contorted deer. Behind me, breath reeking of whiskey, Pa hisses, “It’s suffering, boy. Put it out of its misery.” I rest my cheek against the stock and aim the barrel at the buck,… Continue Reading
Friday night I played another piano bar. If you’d told my younger self that all those years of practice would amount to this… Well, I probably would have been ecstatic, to be perfectly honest. But I was young and dumb… Continue Reading
I sit in front of the blank canvas. There’s only a bright sun in its top right corner. My brush sits full of lemon yellow paint, but a dark tempest dominates my mind. I get gooseflesh as I replay Chuck’s… Continue Reading
On the day my mother died I woke to rain, a rhythmic tick-tick-ticking against the windows, the first real downpour we’d had in months. I roused Oliver, crouching beside his tiny bed and tugging at the blankets, the blunt comma… Continue Reading
Fast car to the coast, he said. Standing around in the schoolyard, we imagined a big black car, maybe with running boards, like you see in the movies. The boy didn’t say anything more. He just kept picking up chestnuts… Continue Reading
I sit on the bottom stair of the empty house, sold sign standing by the hedge. Every item is rehomed or lying deep inside landfill on the edge of town. I can smell George’s snuff and spicy aftershave before I… Continue Reading
That Winter, to me, will always be Clare in a bright red cape, puffing on a snowy street. Moving in in January, I dropped a box of my parents’ old crockery down the stairs, and never replaced it. It was… Continue Reading