As a child, our son Timothy told his teachers he was adopted. During adolescence, he wailed in misery, certain that his best friends had moved away. By age twenty, Timothy’s grief sank into glum desolation, and he would lie on… Continue Reading
You wished out loud to see the moon again. So I waited for night to come, then gathered you in my arms. I took you from the bed, took you from the glowing amber monitors, the oxygen tubes and IV.… Continue Reading
Jeff unfastens his mask and feels cool air on his face. It makes no difference, he decides, if anybody recognises him now. Since he arrived he’s had to fill in so many forms the chances of preserving his secret identity… Continue Reading
Anna let herself go limp as Katy lifted her into the back of the shopping cart they had just stolen from the grocery store parking lot down the block. “At least all of the weight loss makes it easier to… Continue Reading
Maggie became aware of the presence of her inner child the first day of high school, that September she turned fourteen. Her friends, the girls she hadn’t seen all summer because her aunt Louise had wrangled her a job as… Continue Reading
All around Foster are ash trees slipped through by a cold and unexpected wind that has hit Washington and turned the State Department grounds prematurely orange with a litter of ash leaves. The old building looms above the tree line… Continue Reading
When I finally went to see my mom in the hospital, I was shocked at her emaciated state. She’d spent her whole life dieting and now she couldn’t keep the weight on. I could count Ma’s bones right through the… Continue Reading