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.

“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.

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.

Into the well she went tumbling past the dusty stone walls. Hitting the bottom with a heavy womp. The scream pulled from her throat rattled up the well. She moves each arm and leg searching for something wrong but all bones seem intact. The dust settling on her dress and skin makes her cough a hacking cough. Oh My. 

Whenever I think of my brother, I remember that fall afternoon and the big blue Plymouth sedan. Nick was in Korea, and I was walking home from school like every other day. Not in any hurry, just kicking at the leaves, thinking about baseball and that new girl in my class, and why did Sister Rose always have to be so mean.

Our neighbor Deb created quilts for the homeless, stuffed them with a batting of love, stitched on each a dozen pink hearts. Eager for Christmas, she allowed herself just one early gift, a trip to the clinic where micro-lasers would slice away parts of her body she no longer loved, sculpt a new holiday Deb. The doctors called what happened a pulmonary embolism, a clot that moved from a leg to her lung.