The Sloth
There is a nothingness of temperature, a point on the body’s mercury where our blood feels neither hot nor cold. I remember a morning swim on the black sand eastern coast of Costa Rica four months after my twenty-two-year-old fiancé was killed in a car accident. Walking into the water, disembodied by grief, I felt...
The Widow’s Trailer
Ryan stole twelve Shiners from dad’s stash in the shed. We drank them warm in the ditch behind the park, sitting on skateboards and smoking discarded cigarette butts without fear. We drank them fast, bottle for bottle, playing it cool and suppressing the urge to gag. After four beers Ryan said, “watch this,” and took...
Hunting the Moon
Buffalo Park trail curves in a figure eight through a meadow below the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona. In a wet May, spring peepers sing from a little ephemeral wetland. In a generous monsoon summer, Evening Primrose and Sego Lilies lie in the deep grass like fallen stars. In October, grasses have gone gold...
Oatmeal
The kitchen in our brick row house was always cold in the early morning. Chilled and shivering, I sat on the cracked vinyl chair and huddled against the small radiator in the corner. My stomach rumbled as I stole a few forbidden sucks on my six-year-old thumb. In the dim overhead light, I watched as...
Vietnam: Four Ways
1. Silk At the fabric market, a two-tone silk in mauve and gray shimmers, then billows when I free it from the bolt. Delicate cranes fly along its fold. An old woman studies me studying the silk; I can’t let go. “This is so soft,” I say, “so—” But it’s in English. The old woman...
The Sled
My grandfather told me the story only once, and he looked down at his shoes, and I knew that his story was my story, too, long before I ever heard it, before I knew he was a child with a sled and that an older friend from down the street could make him do anything....
I Cannot Explain My Fear
Fear of bears, fear of ladders, fear of freezing. Once, in the Sonoran Desert, I woke with ice on my sleeping bag. Fear of a cancerous thyroid; fear of eating poisonous fish from Japan; fear of sharks, overly large seals and sea lice, too. Fear that my glasses are radioactive because the first time I...
Not a Good Day for Planting Root Crops
The world is an old shoe filled with snow. On the early morning walk to school, I detect signs of thaw in the warmer air. A few hours later, on my way to meet my 10:20 class, I see desire for warmth doesn’t make it so. The air has turned frigid, without a hint of...
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