Together, in the Golden Hour
byBIGGEST ONE LEAPS OFF THE GROUND, shakes the house, bellows with forced levity. “You’ll never guess where it’s made!” Hair Scrunchie’s gaze goes soft. “So, the obvious places are out.”…
Stories
Water Music
byLadies JUST OUTSIDE THE SANCTUARY, A SLAP STINGS THE METAL LADIES-ROOM DOOR. Her soprano sugars my ears: “He doesn’t know what happened to it yet.” A low sigh: the alto,…
Last Bus to Stonehenge
byAS THE BUS AMBLED THROUGH RUSH HOUR, Penny looked at the ticket she picked up from the ‘free’ table at work. That last-minute decision, plus traffic, made her late so…
Picking Cherries
byMARGO VELA’S FATHER SPOKE TO HER FROM HIS URN IN THE BACK SEAT. His words interrupted a silence she’d craved for years. Somehow, he’d found a way past his metal…
Blossom
byTHE DAY MY FIANCÉE, BLOSSOM, WALKED OUT ON ME, the potted plant that adorned our kitchen began to bloom. Great, trumpet-shaped flowers—purple, pink, peach, and white—drooped like lazy, cumbersome skin…
Radiation Therapy and You
byAFTER HE MAPPED AND TATTOOED ME, Bill gave me a pamphlet titled Radiation Therapy and You. It was less than thirty pages long with large print, so I read the…
Billy Walker, Hero
bySEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD BILLY WALKER, driving home from bagging at Win-Dixie, eases his beat-up Kia through cackling pea-sized hail on State Road 40, right outside Ocala, on the rim of the national…
Witnessed Through a Windowpane
byTHE SUN SETS LACKADAISICALLY LIKE MOLASSES ON HOT SUMMER NIGHTS. Sometimes there is a soft breeze that pushes the pieces of trash across the parking lot, lightly scraping the pavement….
August Cherries
byON THE SUN-SOAKED HILL’S OF APRIL’S CALIFORNIA, I remember the way November’s New York air ripped through her. *** The last day I see her the city lies frozen over,…
The Waster
by1. TWENTY MINUTES INTO WHAT THE HISTORY MAJOR’S DATE—her mother’s friend’s son—had referred to as “the film about lesbians,” a man who’d been sitting at the end of the front…