Sometimes, there aren’t words.  Instead, there are smells–rotten and sour and wrecked. “Mom Jones?  Oh, where is she?” I hear Riley before I see her, hear her thinking out loud down the hallway, peering into rooms, twisting that rope of sun-gold hair absently into an uneven bun.  Her hair captures so much light I expect […]

Knife taps against cutting board and the onion cries.  The delicate scarlet rings fall, hiding the slicing scars, all those crisscrossed lines like a haphazard tally of breaths.  If only the flavors–peppery and sun-soaked and honey-sweet–lasted as long as the evidence of our cooking.  A sigh slips as I turn my burning eyes away from the […]

When we round the corner, she gets up from where she sits, pushing open the door.  I can see the cold, straight legs of a card table through a narrow opening; I can tell she has hair the color of straw, that she wears a rose-colored shirt.  Even before she stands in the doorway holding […]

Kevin walks in the door and the afternoon rushes right in with him.  It’s as though the jostling traffic, the dying sun, and dozens of fading fragments of conversation cling to his shirt sleeves, his warm cheeks. They fall off his shoulders, these things, as the strap from his leather bag falls to the floor […]

It’s one of those days with locked-up steel skies and a chill seeping into my skin; one of those days when time bruises our backs and driving to school feels like slowly untangling knots; one of those days when I wonder what caused all this mess but have no real hope for a sensible answer.  It’s one […]

Into the bowling alley I go, “Saturday me” with her yoga pants and her clean face and her Mr. Rogers jacket (yes, because I wear it around the house).  This is the me that’s only me, the honest introvert; the quiet, swallowed-up, zipped-up me just holding tight to God’s hand, walking through the parking lot.  […]

When I walk in the room, this is the other-worldly bit of heaven I see:  a room clogged with dancing royalty, crowns throbbing, faces glittered with joy.  It’s like throwing open a chest full of God’s glory and looking inside:  Confetti spins, pouring from the ceiling, from cannons beside the stage, where the word “SHINE” […]

“—Hey, are you listening to me?” I pause mid-sentence, asking because I know what it is for him to listen.  I know the impossibility he faces, without the ability to deafen distractions.  And I’m telling him what will be, things he’ll want to have heard, mental notes he’ll want to keep. “Yes,” he says softly, […]

“So tell me everything you would like to do this afternoon,” I say, pulling a capless pen from the chipped bisque mug on the desk, sliding a notepad in front of me.  Pansies float around the edge of the paper.  The impressions of Adam’s carb counts from breakfast dent the blank top page, making a […]

At first, Riley can’t see. Bright Sunday morning, and we’re just inside the building where the church meets saying hello, a bunch of mismatched, layered-up family wearing reunion smiles, and I see her bending over her clipboard, too low, too close, one eye flat closed like a patch and the other just barely a slit.  […]