The summer between sophomore and junior year, I found myself in Darian’s empty, furniture-less house. I lay beside him in the dark on the scratchy white carpet, flat cardboard boxes littering the floor. Everything smelled vaguely of mothballs and sawdust. …
NICE GUYS All Nice Guys are Boys, but not all Boys are Nice Guys. Don’t get us wrong, it’s always good to be nice. It doesn’t always pay to be nice, but it doesn’t always pay to do good. Doing …
If I never have children, I will bequeath the gold heart ring on my index finger to the sweetest aide in the nursing home, the one who saves me extra tapioca, because it was always too big for my ring …
In Majorca, the vineyards have been stripped naked. No bodies work in those fields; no falcons circle the grounds. Occasionally, a car rattles along the nearby highway, but mostly, it is quiet. Across the way, on the crest of a …
I am sitting in room 413 of a hospital in South Jersey watching my mother-in-law stare at me. She is unable to speak, half her body stilled by a stroke. Her nails are manicured; she is tan from her recent …
1. I have been thinking, with whatever I have left that still thinks, about the light in his study the morning after. 2. It was not remarkable light. This seems important to say. 3. In Danish, there is a word, …
Something awakens me. When I open my eyes, I’m unaware of what is. The dark room lacks in movement and sends a sign of starless open skies. I need to go back to sleep, but it is not that simple. …
By the time I came along in 1963, my grandparents’ farm was a shadow of its former glory; nevertheless, I thought it remarkable. We drove for miles to get there. Past the Indiana Ammunition Plant. Past the Tasty Freeze. Past …
Uncle Mel was always my favorite. I felt more than a bit of kinship toward him, so I did worry that the cleft in my chin would turn into the deep prominent dimple of his chin. Mel and his wife …
SSG M looked like he shopped at Baby Gap. Shirts two sizes too small, muscles spilling out like he was trying to scare children at the PX. His arms always seemed on the verge of tearing the seams, a walking …
In upstate New York, we rented a cabin around a lake every summer, even though my grandpa built a stone house down the road. The lake was about the length of two football fields, eighteen feet deep at one end …
It happens again and again: the strawberry is almost ripe, and the next day when I go to pick it off the stem, it’s gone. The squirrels and birds who take them, I tell myself, are just as much a …