How could anyone sleep through that? He sounded like an asthmatic chainsaw. The sound wasn’t the worst of it, though. It was those gaps, when the sound ceased, where she hoped that maybe, just maybe he’d stopped — snoring, breathing.… Continue Reading
Others decide things for me, because whatever I decide turns out wrong. It’s all about knowing limits, and I can’t stop at the edges. I associate mainly with other sullied, stigmatized transgressors. I spent two years at the Forensic Psychiatric… Continue Reading
Juanita eases the old woman into the rocker, its tiny nails tightly securing the branches and twigs that form its construction. The slats of the chairback shape the old woman’s spine, sitting her as straight as she’d been, so many… Continue Reading
“Mr. Thompson, Dr. Wheeler will see you now.” I follow the nurse into the narrow hallway and through the rigmarole of bodily metrics. In the examination room, she asks me to remove my shirt. I comply, blushing, directing my vision… Continue Reading
“My life is a sham.” Those were the first words that Martin ever said to me. I must admit, they caught me off guard. Partly this is because Martin had lived with me for years without ever uttering a syllable.… Continue Reading
I’m not scared of the dark like other kids. Daddy and I used to go treasure hunting in the dark all the time. The two kids who share a room with me always cry at night. I tell them that… Continue Reading
I sat, staring at the empty pleather bench on the other side of the table, washing my huevos rancheros down with crafty beer and glancing at the clock on my iPhone. It had been fifteen minutes since he went outside… Continue Reading
On the dawn of my forty-third birthday, I woke up and went to the bathroom just like any other day. Before my butt hit the seat, even before my underwear made it past my thighs, my womb fell right out… Continue Reading
My sister was thirteen when she died. All crooked and soft white like a dogwood flower floating on the water. I heard my mother sobbing on the phone that she had broken her neck nearly to a ninety-degree angle, a… Continue Reading
Behind me, hundreds of papers rustle like the wall is trying to shed its skin. Rain and snow have reduced the pigments on the pages to a neutral gray blob of featureless faces. The names are no more than bleeding… Continue Reading