Her first gift was palm-sized and heavy, wrapped in black silk and tucked into my hand as she passed. I’d seen her before, her face always hidden behind cheap sunglasses, and she’d ignored me the way everyone ignores overweight, anxious men having a cigarette before work. As though they might catch my appearance like a […]
The man stood in the cafe’s doorway staring openly and with no expectation of recompense at a girl who sat three paces away from him. His monochrome, leonine face, bracketed between curly hair and beard of that shade called red only because it is not what is usually called brown, was covered so contiguously with […]
“Mark.” Joe slowly declares my name, as if to confirm that it really is me who arrived with the order; that it’s his partner standing there in the hallway. He’s as surprised to see me as I am him. He’s half naked, though this isn’t our home. I’ve never even been to this apartment. I […]
You have been working in this field for nineteen years, and you must be cautious of the distance between improvement, competency, and conservatism. You notice this most when you hear the advice that hums like the highway in writer groups and chats. When you find comfort in being told things you hold to be true… […]
The neighbor’s house is covered in ivy, and the children who live there are covered in ivy too. Well, the child who lives there. There was a miscarriage. There is only one child. The mother told her daughter, You are a big sister, even though the aunt called her brother “a fistful of unviable cells.” […]