Inventory for Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Solstice
Late June. Green rains. The gardens hum. Who would die when the days are so long? Yet my grandmother lies in a hospital room drifting toward death on dark waters...
Periwound
Wildfire smoke drifts over the hills and erases the farther shore. I’m waking cold from the same purple dream. It involves the edge of a dark cliff; it involves deep water. Recently, my sister has claimed avoidance as a cure for any ailment. My friend’s summer fling buys her a book on avoidant attachment and...
A Normal Couple
Sometimes I think he’s better … and then we’re out to eat and the coughing begins and I forgot—he forgot, we forgot—an inhaler (which bag was it in??) and then the looks from the other diners start and I swear he’s not dying and I’m not a bad wife for sitting here unconcerned as he...
The Wordless Woods
Foraging along the woods’ edge, the doe looks up from the hydrangea she is nibbling and twitches an ear—a salute, I think, stopping the car, though it isn’t a salute. She may be afraid for herself and the fawn with its muzzle in the mast, but shows no fear standing serene at the border of...
I Dream About the Apocalypse
My brother—a firefighter in real life—tries to organize us all, get us down into some echoing subterranean cavern that looks like the inside of a ship. Explosions rattle in my sternum, giant robots search the houses, wind flings fire this way and that. The end of everything. And I feel—relief. If I open my eyes...
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