In my alternate world I hardly ever wash dishes. Once in a long while, I’ll hang out laundry only to smell the air-fresh fabric and see the sun streak through bedsheets, as they flap in the breeze like flags. Normally, I’m engaged in much more highly-elevated activities— such as writing a novel that will answer…
We have blinders on. All we dare expose are our eyes. Our faces are covered with new underwear. Our noses and mouths have become our hidden parts. Our senses of smell and taste are in danger of disappearing, of becoming almost elicit. We are covering them, hiding them. They have become our new private parts….
There was a time when loneliness and lack of tender touch opened her to another. There was a shaking, a rumbling in the pull. They were on a precipice, Pulled by fascination and lust and love and a desire to put a hand through the fragile fabric of their world. And so they met, talked,…
Weather-beaten billboards on the side of the road Places I might have travelled People I may have met Poke into my consciousness like a needle on an old record player Scratchy, tearfully nostalgic. My mind is flipping through old photographs Searching for details I might have missed. What are the memories I haven’t remembered? We…
There is a need for order, a desire for change. I move things around. I clean corners. I see new arrangements on shelves and they make me smile. New shapes, simple lines, things in place, small shifts. The world around me quakes— reverberating with hate and fear, resisting evolution. And so my simple solution…
The ground is soft. Last night’s rain is helping. Damp earth piles up beside the deepening hole. She can’t see very well. The sky is dark, cloudy, no moonlight. Better not to see the slimy creatures whose homes she is disturbing. Dig, dig. The earth is heavy. Mariel can feel blisters, starting to tear her…
In the morning, I’m a girl, a tall gangly girl with pigtails, but that only lasts until noon when I turn into a dark-haired man in a business suit. Sometimes after 7:00 PM, I’m a dolphin, swimming in water, cool and dark, making my own secret music. I’ve even had occasion to be an old…
I feel empty, wrung out. And yet there’s something waiting, hanging in the air like perfume. Someone passed by, left a trace. It feels exotic, full of promise. It is lifting my edges, which feel flattened. I’ve been keeping low to the ground. My head down, my nose in the earth. My wings pressed down,…
The box feels awkward on her lap. It jostles each time Bobby’s old Ford hits a bump in the road, its edges cut into her thighs. She shifts her weight and tugs at her too-short black skirt. Should have never worn this, she thinks. But it’s the only black dress she owns and you’re supposed…
There was a time when Jane could fly. She remembers the feeling of lifting off, of being held up by something light and soft yet strong, not like water, not like air— indescribable. Yet there she was, floating high above all that she had known on earth—the rooftops, the streets winding past her small town,…