Gone was your graduation day the rose you held, crushed. Gone was your church wedding day, the white lace torn. Gone were your four giggling daughters, the pony rides, the parties with hundreds of guests, the swaying lights, and the sound of a jazz band, wailing, hollering. Simon watched you die. It was like bearing [...]
Kimberly Black and Sharice Swain sat in a parked car Thursday with the motor running when they got into an argument. Kimberly left the car, went into her house, returned with a knife, and stabbed Sharice in the face and neck. Spurting blood, Sharice stepped on the gas pedal and the car hit Kimberly’s two [...]
In fourth grade, our teacher noticed we were the only two who could carve, draw, and paint. She took us to the museum and before El Greco, we looked at each other and knew we were standing before a painting of terror and awe. His tormented brushstrokes, even the way blue died into his titanium [...]
The fire burns but brings no warmth. Cypress stands black against the sky. You’re gone; shadows die on the floor. We drove here, our first trip as one, watched sunsets shimmer on white sand, and blue waves breaking on the shore. Later, we came back, to relight that same fire against the sunset What was [...]
I dreamed last night that there was a shrine half a city block in size. A thirty-foot bronze fence enclosed a mountain of human ashes and bits of broken possessions like cookware, children’s toys, and pieces of plastic whose function could not longer be identified. These were the unidentified remains of people killed in the [...]
You were a head taller than the rest of us, with a lean body clad in white T-shirt, black jeans, rumble belt, and leather jacket from a street our parents wouldn’t go to. You were a man among our nervous tribe of scrawny kids because you didn’t care about stupid things like graduation. We scattered [...]
The summer wind sets the curtains flapping, the ends of the cords snare-drum the plaster. Garlic and chili waft from a kitchen and a sax player on the street blows hard. She lays on me, panting, black hair flying, eyelashes wet, damp air like opium. “Are you hungry?” She says she’ll be right back. Five [...]
You were a young driver in a cream-colored coupe. The rubber tires squealed around an alpine curve and then there was no sound as the car overturned. It left your parents dead and you dazed, so to age with just one memory. Though your inheritance and the insurance meant a comfortable house, you wandered, your [...]
How many times can a scar heal over? The ones carved into you with a backhoe? Or the ones you pave over with concrete only to crack open in an earthquake? Do tears ever dry up? Or do they fill the hollow left in your chest by grieving, a private Dead Sea sloshing when you [...]
You were the oldest of seven, and the table was never full. The town suffered in soot and smog, the clang of gears drove off the birds. You couldn’t tell your left from right. Dropped out first. Then you were laid off, and your father was laid off too. Killing yourself, you thought, would feed [...]