Where’s the movie about the person with the balanced life? I think to myself, over my morning spaghetti. The one who takes a jog before pouring their morning co...
When we go to the party together you turn into a moth and I turn into a monster. Horns grow from the top of my head, break through skin, twist and pirouette int...
We had drunk too much. We stood propped by glass cubes, mocking a clear-paned window. Like us, its clarity is mottled, a once translucency muddling with ribbons...
I don’t mind driving. I can make the trip. It’s no problem. I have my music and the echoes of an audiobook about a repressed lesbian woman from the 1940s. The w...
Having finished mowing the lawn, I walked into the kitchen with the hopes of constructing a towering sandwich reminiscent of those in the Sunday paper cartoon s...
You won’t remember going to bed. You won’t remember telling your kids to go to bed either or their sobbing when you refuse to lie with them or the sound of the ...
They converted the mall into housing units in 2026, but we were on the waiting list and didn’t get in until a few years later during what they called Phase 2. T...
Act 1: Sitting in the Road
I thought you’d come home past midnight as I chewed apart the last few stale crumbs that I had snatched from the refrigerator. It ...
Tornado watch, and there was no violence at the robotics competition, no flame-throwing, no gears clattering and rolling off into the warehouse. Friendly nerds,...
Mike Brady soaks in his new hot tub, thinking of his old wife. He’s trying to place her — the color of her hair, the shape of her eyes, and especially the sound...
I came to the spot where she knew I’d go because she’d made it this way and only this way.
I am not a man, after all.
Ashen white are the trees that circl...
As a kid, I looked after an ant colony that smelled like crocodiles. They started each day by filing in from one end of the circuit and called it a night after ...
We skipped our ten-year reunion in favor of a mini-gathering at a misplaced bar and a group stagger through the warehouse store district.
Shawn said he’d lik...
My little brother had a sixth sense in the movie, but really, I’m the one who can see dead people. He made it big pretending, though he’s not so big now, so I g...
Niall was in high school, older than us and he wore glasses that were octagonal and shaded so that you could just barely make out his eyes. His sister was young...
Tickets were expensive. $50,000 for a seat on the jet that flew from Boston through a hologram of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. About half the passengers...
I hope this doesn’t come as a severe shock to everybody, but I’m through. I know what you’re thinking. No hips, skinny—it’s sad, it’s poignant. Only exercise I ...
Since birth, Agatha was very sensitive to pollen. She came rushing in from the yard shouting “Mom, Mom!” between spells of four, five, even six sneezes in a row...
In East Coast cities, you can travel a century in a matter of blocks, adopt a street kitten who unearths crud from primordial crannies you wish remained unchart...
I went to the drugstore to steal stuff. You can steal all kinds of mints and gum and medicine. I stick to children’s stuff like diapers, formula, kids Tylenol. ...
“Frankenstein! Frankenstein! Frankenstein.” Ray and Mal’s son, Gill, yelled from the second floor bathroom. Together they looked up from their morning coffee, d...
I save the ribbed horn for last after the glowing tenderloins and flaky iridescent wings marinated in fairy juice. I take if off my plate and grip the eyeless m...
I’m sitting in a Trader Joe’s parking lot in a green Subaru. The grey leather inside is still tacky, by the way.
Do you remember when we left that party? It ...
Infinity drifting up, fading out, exhale: spaciousness. Light echoes through the cave. Darkness. A room with five lamps, three tall windows, emerald curtains gr...
Ma stored it next to the pull-out wastebasket under the sink. She hated it, but couldn’t throw it out, knowing it made us happy: The Grilled Cheese Maker 3000.
...
Grace did something wonderful at work. She shined a light in the dropped darkness. She saved an entire life! To say more might embarrass or betray or violate la...
You came crying on our doorstep, sweet baby, the day after you’d gone with him. I named you Butterfly because what else can I call you after something so ugly? ...