Ian had become a wave. This was how it worked: he loved Sandra so much that it had melted his heart, and then melted his body and his limbs to water. The body is roughly two-thirds water, and it does not take a lot for the other third to catch up.
Read More...In the Rip Tide
I get elbowed in the throat. I gasp for breath. My arms are pinned to my sides, but I arch my neck up to the black-painted ceiling, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the odor of fear. Beneath the malleable rubber of my canvas sneaker, I feel the edge of a cheekbone. Suddenly I feel like a murderer.
Read More...Tricks of Life
I wouldn’t call my dad cheap. He was crafty. With five kids on a teacher’s salary he had to be. I remember going into Macy’s one time with him and my brother Toby to buy Toby a pair of slacks for an upcoming family wedding.
Read More...Wayne’s Spontaneous Overflow
He’d raised three boys without ever writing a poem. He’d outlived his wife by 30 years, managing all the household chores, and never written a poem. He’d worked as a foreman at a mining pit, he’d run his own machine shop, and after the recession of the early ’90s, he’d kept the books for a number of small businesses, and in all that time, he’d never felt the need to put his thoughts into verse.
Read More...Drawn to Scale
A map can save your life. Say you’re lost midway in the gulf between two known tracks, miles of wilderness around you on all sides. You spot a landmark, you pull out your map and compass, and you can make a bee line for salvation.
My friend Jim has hiked and skied all through the Bridger, Crazy, Madison, and Gallatin ranges—often venturing where people may or may not have ever stepped before—and yet it was a map of his wife that saved him.
Read More...Peddler
I’m standing on the porch of another split-level, post-war modern home waiting for an answer. I have a green, plastic, grocery bag full of Girl Scout cookies, and I know what I’m going to hear. I am out of Thin Mints, and that’s all they want.
“Got any Thin Mints?” a man in a ribbed, white, tank tee shirt’s going to ask while he scratches his electrified salt and pepper hair and tugs his shirt down over his hanging belly.
“No,” I’ll have to respond through the screen door he hasn’t opened. “I’m all out. But I have lots of—”
Read More...Red Mask
The gong sounded as the first sliver of sun appeared. Mia knew what it meant, and she braced herself against the sadness.
Mia had not slept the night before, and she was not only fully dressed, but elaborately dressed, with a red silk gown tied over a black lining. These were the colors of mourning.
Read More...Nominal Majority
I get a job, but my brother visits for supper and my parents don’t care about my news. And he’s not being nice about it. And all my parents keep saying is I have two days.
They want me out of the house by the 30th, but I’m only nineteen. I don’t have a high school diploma. My dad says there’s nothing to talk about. I have to be out and that’s it.
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