The holidays loom and I’ve got two weeks off work. Last Christmas was pretty quiet. Not much family left. Karen was the one with the big family. I enjoy the church service in the morning. The kids

Body Traumas

There is a story Ahma used to tell me. The story of a girl who drew on herself in permanent marker. Ponds filled with lily pads, frogs on said lily pads, flies in the mouths of said

My mother wouldn’t let her get a pet tarantula, despite many tantrums, so instead she played with whatever bugs crawled around the house.

Clark says that trying to save the mussels is dumb because there are so many of them. That’s his logic. The town says they have to repair the dam in the lake, or the houses down the way will flood

Lee and Aiko made a deal; one last trip together. They could make it feel like the end of something, if that’s what it was going to be.

It was clear she had been here from the smell of wind in the room.

Dan disowned my sister and me via email a year ago

Mondays, Mondays, Mondays!

Ha-ha! I love my wife Gwen! She's the best. Today, she sprinkled paprika in my oatmeal—to prank me I bet—and I didn’t figure it out until halfway through the bowl.

The seafood restaurant in my dreams closed down last night.

Margot and I had humped once, too, when I stopped by and Andrea wasn’t home.

I saw the whole thing from my sunroom, how the front wheel pinned his legs, shredded his muddy jeans then tore through the rest of him.

When I heard the name, I was sure it held a deeper meaning. No, she said, laughing... She explained that the knot combines the features of a reef knot, a thief knot, and a granny knot. It’s a portmanteau, not a metaphor. Grief has no meaning, she said.

I love beginnings. The clack of the wheels on a roller coaster climb, the smell of cotton candy and grease.

"Hey Em, it's Dad. Sorry it's so early ..."

Why did Train A leave while Train B was still getting ready?

There wasn’t a bike rack because car people owned this town. You locked up to telephone poles covered in missing cats and hoped your chain stayed chained. In the shadows of rusting delivery trucks the

As Yoda sat on a tree stump, perfectly force-carved to complement his bony exterior and knobby joints, he realized that it had been five days in a row now that he had sat on this tree stump.

We know we are eels.

This is a story you’ve heard before. There’s a girl, let’s call her a young woman, with [blond / brown] hair and [blue / brown] eyes. Maybe you say these details are unimportant, but you know how they

January

Your friends want to go out for New Year’s. You do not.

They prod and cajole you: come on, it’ll be fuuuuuuun.

It’s not that you don’t like going out. You will more than happily join

"He slept among a pile of used truck tires ..."

For as long as Mark could remember, he had wanted to save someone from a wolf. He had wanted it to happen in a specific way. Peculiar even.

Thunderstorms form in dense, towering vertical clouds. The necessary factors for a storm to develop are moisture, rising unstable air, and a lifting mechanism. A single bolt of lightning is five times

When we worked together at his father’s diner, Tom drove an old minivan; green body with red doors. He would crank the window down and idle outside my front door. He wore a blue bandana rolled up and

I’m standing on top of Drew Barrymore’s star and the song’s issuing from a hot-purple Sony boom box someone set up a few feet away.