The Sea
Against a backdrop of spruce trees at the far end of a small beach, a large boulder squats at the edge of the bay. Its top half is dry and pale. The lower half is damp and dirty-bronze. It’s too big to be jostled by the tides. In the foreground of this photo, dozens of...
The Golden Box
I’m on a miniature riverboat or a Chinese junk, or a wooden houseboat with a paddle wheel. I’m captain and crew. The inlet is crowded with vessels from earlier ages of sea-going vessels: hollowed out canoes, reed boats, a schooner, a pinnace. There’s an old dock and a pier and it’s crowded with vendors hawking...
Reading to Mom
Dad answered and put me on speakerphone, then placed a plastic plate divided into five colored sections in front of mom at their kitchen table and said, it’s Laura, time for your morning medicines; I said, Mom, pick up the biggest oval white pill in the center of the plate and she said, “which one?”...
Things that Burned Right Through Me
Buying baby socks and three onesies and one newborn outfit on the way to the appointment where the fetal doppler told us you were dead, the same newborn outfit I now see in the box on the closet floor every day when I drag out a sweater. My parents driving across five states to stay...
All of It
The Start of It A friend of D’s wife G says there’s been a bad accident. “That’s all I know,” she says, “except that it happened on Rte. 15 and Laurel Road.” She lowers her voice as if she doesn’t want to be overheard. “D is in surgery right now as I’m telling you this....
So Many Tiny Stories
I’ve been hanging around a lot of elderly folks recently, very elderly, and I don’t know what to say to them. I am so much younger. The techs put me on a completely different treadmill way off in the corner (at one point I am actually running), and on totally different resistance settings on the...
Letter to a Half-Life
The memory comes fast and furious like an Alabama storm. How I used to drive you to the trailer park past Plantation Hills so you could fuck men for 35 dollars a pop, migrant workers that lived two too many to a bedroom. Were you even 18 then? You’d give me 10 dollars to drive...
White Camellias
The picture takes up most of the wall opposite my boyfriend’s bed. A photograph of white camellias in a crystal vase. I sit with my arms around my knees, naked under the duvet, watching the image through the conservation glass. He is downstairs making breakfast. When it’s ready he will call me down and seat...
The Night Chorus
Sure, sex is great, but have you ever clocked out of a waitress shift on a night when everything went right instead of wrong and at the exact moment you’re pulling out of the parking spot you performed laborious geometry to fit into someone yells “I love your truck!” and you drive home with the...
Girls Night
I am supporting the ghost of Jackie’s body and doing math. How many drinks has she had? Three? Four? We are curved together over the lip of the trash can as she empties her stomach. Her bile smells sweet and acrid, the desiccated remnants of a mango-pineapple mixer. A cup of ice water sits, sweating...
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