She was already dead, the doctors told us. Had been dead for quite some time. There was nothing to do about it now, nothing to do but what had to be done. It wasn’t sinful, they said. We were just… Continue Reading
As I walk the boundary of my property after dusk, I don’t trust my eyes. I’m trying to make sense of various shapes around me. Shadows lurking behind trees are like people hiding from me. Bushes, jutting out from the… Continue Reading
Jazzy had first learned English by reading and her vocabulary could sound strange to my American ears. Words like suitor, betrothal, nuptials. But when Jazzy meant love, that was the word she used. As in her final message, just before… Continue Reading
“Excuse me, sir. Is this your shoe?” The woman was dressed in a loose hibiscus-orange gown, sitting on a stone bench, beneath a matching orange umbrella. I hadn’t seen her at first when turning the corner in the path, but… Continue Reading
Morning — it’s coffee and medication before thieving time from the new day. Albert shakes pills in his left hand like dice and looks out of the kitchen window to a yellow carpet of ginkgo leaves rimed with the first… Continue Reading
I pull dresses and pants, jackets and blouses from the closet and stuff them into plastic trash bags. Given the pandemic, I couldn’t find a charity to take Pearl’s clothes even though, for all the COVID patients she treated, she… Continue Reading
The actual crash — the impact and not the spectacular explosion of sight and sound that follows — is nearly imperceptible. The Volvo soars, the cabin rotates, and my body wants to travel, even as the car, meeting pavement, does… Continue Reading
I. Instead of casseroles, the CDC caseworker brought the new widow a cardboard box of food. Canned corn. Dried beans. Prunes. A preprinted label declared this box appropriate for the widow’s age and weight. “It’s not usually quite enough,” the… Continue Reading
The fire had been burning for eight hours, but the earth was still not soft enough. Just as Harold predicted. It had been an unforgiving winter: sub-zero temperatures for months, ice storms, and buckets of snow. It had taken Harold… Continue Reading
I want to swim in the ocean with her. But I can’t. She’s sitting in my lap scrolling through the images of her mother and me. The computer screen is a useless time machine that can’t change the past. The… Continue Reading