Monday isn’t so bad when the weekend is just a concept for others to plan. When each day is part of the same routine: wake up at 5:30am to do laundry, make breakfast and lunch, leave Maria’s breakfast...

Marina wakes, drowsy and disoriented, near the ocean floor. A phantom tremor pulses beneath her skin. As she’s about to scream, a rhythmic sensation caresses her body as it expands and contracts… thru...

Dear Shepherd, I’m alone in the den tonight, gnawing on what you said last September when our little pride lounged poolside in Zanzibar after that terrific Tanzanian hunt. Your graceless comment tore ...

Before the invasion when everyone was blissful and ignorant or young and ignored and me and the husband slept peacefully at night, a beetle made its way to the island with a horn like a rhinoceros and...

What if he’d stayed home for his daughter, Chloe’s, sweet sixteen party, helped his wife wrap presents, made his “famous” nachos loaded with chipotles, grilled corn, and pepper jack. What if he’d soug...

The low fuel light blinks on as we pull into a Walmart gas station and I feel the tension in the car ease. We should have filled the tank at lunch but got distracted posting selfies in the truck stop....

Toby rang the doorbell again. A draft eddied leaves across the concrete porch. He reached down to the baby carrier at his feet and adjusted the blanket canopied over its handle, shutting out the wind ...

watches it run down and cover me; says, we have begun the season of dying; (the one for us; not the one for everyone else; that comes later;) my mother tells me to look away from my television: to com...

Last night I dreamt PD Walker hosted a murder mystery at his house in DC. He showed us hidden nooks for inappropriate dalliances; he served only chicken salad with sticks of celery. I suspect the sala...

My new neighbor, Julia, with her dangly snowflake earrings and how close she’s standing, laughing at my jokes, touching my arm, electric—the way her red dress clings in all the right places that I cou...

They are so hungry, my monsters. I coax them out from under my bed, and they won’t shut up. Feed me, says the little one. Feed me, says the biggest. Feed me, the skinny one begs. We leave my room, tip...

Tap, tap, tap. His beak like a schoolmarm finger. Let me in, the crow says in Crowspeak. You still speak Crowspeak from the time 20 crows banded together and snatched Jimmy Parker away as the two of y...

Or so I thought. It was just a job, just a soap opera. A ridiculous one, sure, what with my upcoming wedding to a monkey. The producers said they needed something to bump up the ratings, to keep their...

They had been full, full, full, and now it is so lovely to be empty, to be so full of potential and not the leavings of people’s lives. It is spring – that month that comes in like a lamb and takes it...

Bob and I are at the zoo, checking out the macaques from the wide viewing window, when I notice a muscular man in a tiger t-shirt checking out Bob’s ass. And even though coming here on a token date wa...

Hey Trixie, Meet us at the Fernwood Cemetery this Sunday- we’ll be passing through. Had to cut our trip short after Timmy drowned. Bummer about Duncan’s colitis- I didn’t know dogs can get that. Those...

Again, a road trip. But no longer the seatbelt-less, high-heel, buttoned down tucked, bows on pigtails, paper map, stop for a single precious photo to be developed months hence. And yet, my no-longer-...

The doctor with the serpentine stethoscope coiled around his neck shakes his head. He insists there’re some unusual murmurs in your mom’s heart, and I’m arguing with him it can’t be the heart. All she...

The night is bitter. My teeth ache, frozen down to their roots. I prod them with my tongue. Sharp splinters blossom from each socket, like shattered kernels of hard winter corn. “Sheila?” No answer. W...

I talked to my sister about it, because sometimes she was wise, even if she was annoyingly optimistic. “Do you think we’re living a lucky life?” I asked. She bopped me on the head with her support mon...

Wish you may…. Breathe in clouds of steam as you climb into the bath. Clasp the bar of earthy olive oil soap that your beloved gifted you on your birthday. Press it to your chest as you petition for a...

Melissa’s baby girl has colic and huge brown eyes with thick lashes. Haley’s baby girl won’t nurse and has chronic ear infections and a full head of dark hair. Lynn’s baby boy has a large birthmark sh...

Ma spent every Saturday arguing with our neighbor over the hedges. At first we thought it was hatred, but only later did we learn it was a form of symbiosis, the mating of needs and wants, marriage of...

You wake up and stretch your arms in the direction of the clouds, you have gotten into the habit of sleeping on the roof, so there are actually clouds above you—you love sleeping on a roof so much mor...

First thing they do is take away her makeup. Apparently a girl can kill herself with a tube of lipstick or a wand of mascara, though Rita’s not sure how. She herself had swallowed a fistful of pills b...

The look of things confounds me, Doris said, rolling alongside Vern at the old folks home. Several squirrels looked up from their acorns suspiciously. Vern was new to the home and admired the clean li...

Paul the shuttle driver’s 2000 Subaru has crinkled Mcdonald’s boxes, French fries, splattered windows. Doesn’t need my boyfriend to tell him where the parking lot exit is, been doing this for thirty y...

I started, buying as much butter as we could afford. I’d just gotten paid so that was a lot of butter, more butter than the closest store had on its shelves. The look on the girl’s face when I parked ...

once upon a time, my grandma had a stroke after giving birth to a stillborn in a crickety bed. she was taken not to a hospital, but to a church. there: the priest adorned her face in holy water & pray...

You work, you serve, you cook, you clean for others. You do what you need to, but it’s never enough. Sometimes you ask for help. For food. For shelter. For life. And yet, you scrape together what you ...

My neighbor, Rooster, is sling-shotting baby doll heads into our backyard the morning my husband says, “we need to talk,” while hunched over the divorce papers scattered across the table. I didn’t bel...

Father has locked himself in his Subaru Forrester again. He thinks the rain, and the booming thunder will distract us, but we’ve grown older, more desperate for his touch, the smell of his heady sweat...

I sliced my hand with a steak knife the day after Christmas, sneaking leftover pie. The wound stung and pulsed. I made my way to the sink, rinsed my hand over the piled dishes. It hurt. The water ran ...

Casablanca is a film of famous lines—“This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” “Play it, Sam,” and my favorite: “We’ll always have Paris.” Rick says this to Ilsa in their last scene together....

I found the light in the crevice between the counter and the stove. Just a tiny glow in a thin line of space. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I weren’t trying to rescue a crumb from falling over the pre...

Inside my ribcage is a heart-leaf philodendron. She vines around each organ, springing forth new growth. Fresh green leaves by the day. She’s a stubborn bitch of a houseplant. I don’t water her. She d...

Gi-Gi smelled like coffee beans as she jiggled the bag down the hallway like a maraca. The hallway dark except for the streetlight through the window. Sammy clicked on the emergency light they kept on...

When I buried my deceased husband, I assumed he’d stay put for once. But six months later, he called to say he’d moved in with a lady friend and now that he had the space, he hoped I’d surrender the t...

Scared of bats (rabies). Scared of mice (hantavirus). Scared of mosquitoes (encephalitis). Things that fly. Things that bite. I was scared too. Afraid of everything. I was never afraid of you. I was s...

I was born to world-famous parents—my father a notorious rapper and my mother a favorite Pedro Almodovar star. My parents can do almost anything they want. Swim with whales. Buy a town. Name a kid Uni...

The first person I meet in heaven glares and knocks me down. In life, he claims, I kissed his wife. In heaven, turns out all your questions are answered, even questions like: Who kissed my wife before...

My childhood best friend was beautiful. For many years, she had to wear a back brace. It gave her a dignified air, as if a string were attached to the top of her head, pulling her up tall. She glided ...

Emly held her breath. She gazed at the backyard through the locked sliding glass doors. The air smelled of Watermelon Smash Buzz Balls, sleazy confectionary perfume, and B.O. Edgar’s parents were away...

The train car smells faintly of damp fabric. Ian keeps his knees pressed together, his canvas bag pulled flush against his stomach so it doesn’t brush the suit coat of the salaryman standing above him...

Earl Morgan built a life-sized toy army tank for his boys, Tommy and Scott, in the summer of seventy-one. A rope ladder on the side led up to the top hatch door, and another led down into the hull whi...