Mother’s grief unfurled slowly, like paint blistering and peeling from the shed out back. For months after the sirens, she locked herself inside with our photo albums. She taped pink-stickered pages of ultrasounds and baby-shower smiles to the walls until daylight thinned and mosquitoes came out.
Grubby little kids knocking on doors, begging for candy. He turned off his porch light, Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do? They came anyway. Ringing the doorbell. Banging on the door. Interrupting his television. They disturbed his cat, Sam. The old tom yowled from the couch, a sharp, throaty complaint.
We know naked. We've done naked for a living. But tonight we are washing you. Tonight we are saying goodbye. We can’t be there tomorrow, on those hard wooden pews, in the church your family chose. But we can be here tonight, with the women you called sisters.
I was in Tadros Ink in the Old Town getting my obligatory pilgrim’s tattoo when Nietzsche called to tell me God was dead. “This is not a good time for such news,” I said, fumbling to operate the phone with my left hand while the tattoo artist worked on my right forearm.
Happy Anniversary, darling. He kisses her cheek and hands her a paper cut-out of a man and woman, their hands linked. She sticks it on the fridge door. Hours later, as she watches his dinner burn, she notices a small rip in the woman.
You're putting that kohl pencil around your eyes again. The mirror balanced on your knees, speckled with age, catches the dim light from the heater Mom left out for you.
Maggie ran her hands over her newly flattened stomach and smiled wistfully. She inhaled another breath of the whipped-up wind and listened once more for the crash of waves on the beach before closing the kitchen window.
A late summer’s night in the Irish countryside. The last light has faded from the sky; the house has settled into quietness. A bedroom. The bed is in its summer position, pulled into the bay window recess.
“When my sister has a bad day,” she says, “she goes into Brown Thomas to stroke the shoes.” “To what the shoes?” he asks, not sure he’s heard right. “When she has a bad day, she goes into Brown Thomas to stroke the shoes,” she repeats.
The dress I loved was a hand-me-down from someone I can’t remember. It had ribbon ties at the shoulders, and blocks of pink, yellow and blue. My hair peeked below my earlobes like the splayed out ends of a broom.
Steven’s eyes scanned the room as I described the past year – the new doctor, the new medications, a book I almost read. We were in a North Beach bar that hadn’t changed since its beatnik heyday, except for the prices and clientele.
As we were going through the Da’s things – so few, he did not acquire objects, he borrowed books from the library and listened to what the radio offered – we found a notebook, dark red with a black cloth-covered spine.
Someone’s banging on the front door, but that’s not what’s woken me. There’s a high-pitched whining that surely only dogs should be able to hear. Ben, lying next to me, doesn’t stir, which isn’t surprising. He’s taken to wearing earplugs at night, and in the day too, if he thinks he can get away with it. He says it makes things easier to bear.
Jon is no doubt wandering Egmont Park, wondering if he got a detail wrong. He is looking for me, anxious perhaps that I am late, but certain I will show. I am a good person, he trusts that.
and the end-of-working-week hubbub seeps towards our balcony table. The river meanders beneath us and in the bar a singer’s testing the mike. I’m chatting to my husband Jim about anything
Cover the mirrors. Even the bathroom mirrors. You’ll need double-stick tape or removable plastic hooks. The bathroom mirrors are flat against the wall. Not built for mourners. The mirrors are dealbreakers, you’ll need to find a way.
Dad was up early. He’d snuck into my bedroom like a trained spy and whispered: “Jack, wake up. I just got the call from Q. I have to go.” I could smell the Old Spice, drenched to mask the carousing from the night before.
We hadn’t been in touch like we shoulda done, what with Jeb stationed in Texas, and then we had the twins, and then the basement flooded…it was just one rash a shit after another and we just kinda focused on keepin our heads above water to be truthful.
Penny propels her trolley along, monitoring her personal digital assistant as she goes. The PDA is strapped to her wrist so convenient and annoying at the same time. She checks, picks, scans and packs, then dodges past dithering customers with their trolleys and kids.
The mist tumbles down the mountain, an avalanche of air, engulfing every potato plot, sprig of heather and dwelling in its path. One by one, the glimmers of candlelight in the stone houses extinguish, the animals stop grazing and raise their heads. The birds fall silent.
Her breasts are the first to disappear. Such a strange sensation, the wind cutting through her where the flesh had curved out over her meaty ribs, where blood had flowed through deep blue veins, and now there is nothing.
This is a story about a traffic jam love triangle love straight line. This is a story about me and Curtis. This is a story about me and Johnny. This is a story about a November snowstorm in Indianapolis Kansas City Cincinnati that dumped enough inches during evening rush hour it made its own traffic jam.
I’ve written you a letter, I’m not sure why, because I don’t know where to send it, but there was something I wanted you to know. You see, I did plan for you, sort of, you were on my to do list, a rough draft pinned to the fridge under the ‘I love Ibiza’ magnet. I thought I had plenty of time, but something always came up, a doubt, a better offer, promotion, I thought time was on tap. I did feel a pang of something but thought it was indigestion from the kebab I ate, while waiting at the…
Prophet Esther sat in her darkening office, hand resting on the telephone, brown skin almost invisible in the gloom, the social worker’s card a pale glimmer.
You sit up and stretch your arms as I fumble for the alarm. I had the strangest dream, you say through a yawn. We had this luscious garden and grew all our own vegetables.
We used to comment on the couples sat facing one another in restaurants, eating three-course meals without sharing a word. As our children grew, our criticism shifted to families paying good money to sit around a table focused on their devices, eating in silence.
Some situations in life can be difficult to navigate, so it’s helpful that there are conventional codes of conduct to guide you through them. Let’s call them fiats.
Alice is by the pier again, looking. Her eyes are blurred by drink or tears; she is no longer sure which. Finding a tussle of bushes she squats down to piss.
Baby’s father slips from bed at seven, dons a clean blue button-down that highlights his eyes. Tangled in sheets in a pale nightgown, I stink of milk, Baby Boy belly-down on me, chests rising and falling together.
They climbed in the misty rain without speaking, he in front pushing the pace, she behind, her view filled by his backpack and flopping shorts and the hairless slabs of his calves pushing like overworked pistons to get his bulk up the hill.