Don’t go swimming if your pockets are filled with rocks. That’s the advice my father gave me just before he backed jerkily out of our driveway and putted down our suburban, tree-lined street with the sun glistening off the chipped… Continue Reading
The children grew heavier the more I watched them. Their little thighs puffed up, their backsides ballooning, their disproportionate heads leaden as their fingers chubby and exploring reached for the ponies’ ears, and they kicked their sides as if they… Continue Reading
Before I reached the toy aisle, the lavender scent of the unicorn called to me. I had to find which one it was and ran to the shelf of ponies. You can have one, mom says and then we have… Continue Reading
The Pentecostal girl spends all night talking to the electric wheel in the sky. The sky turns from black to blue while the wheel spins its yarns of reckless wisdom and the secret curvature of time, telling her to board… Continue Reading
Dad insisted on two things when we were growing up: fireworks at the lake for Fourth of July and the slog to Punxsutawney to see good ol’ Phil every February second. Maybe Brendan and I shouldn’t have rolled our eyes… Continue Reading
“What are you running away from, Pat?” Carolynn asked, smiling, the contours of her face faintly lit by the sun spilling through the coffee shop window. I leaned forward and cupped my coffee mug with both hands. Every time I… Continue Reading
Grey clumps of mould, slowly dissolving into squelchy porridge under the wheels of the tram, are all that’s left to us from the crystalline decadence of the recent snowstorm, the glittering silence of the fields when all sounds were muffled,… Continue Reading
It was a disgustingly beautiful day to be plodding across Lake Michigan. There wasn’t a wisp of the somber, angry clouds Lydia had pictured when imagining the first time visiting her son in prison. She squinted at the sun and… Continue Reading
John George sat on a log. The Pacific Northwest stretched out before him in all its damp winter wonder; though he yearned to be somewhere else, here he was, stranded by the Department of Justice on this hectare of rain… Continue Reading
The boulder had trailed an inexplicably straight and solitary path along the flat, desert floor. It had then travelled a short distance at a right angle, and now appeared to be pointing to a building just visible at the end… Continue Reading