51
May 25, 2018
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 […]
52
Apr 6, 2018
In that house on the hill, someone shouts so loud the windows rattle, brittle and tinkling, like chains. In horror films, that sound–always the glass clattering like shivering teeth–makes me want to hide my face. My steps slow as I pass by, a rumbling street and a sidewalk between. “I told YOU,” I hear a […]
53
Feb 23, 2018
I walk and let things go, whispered things, all the heavy and daunting things pressed against my shoulders like so much Winter weight, damp and thick and flat grey; things that cannot be at all what they seem. This weather inspires every kind of ache; all day the clouds have swallowed us. And if this […]
54
Feb 9, 2018
“—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, […]
55
Feb 2, 2018
“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 […]
56
Jan 19, 2018
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. […]
57
Nov 3, 2017
In the kitchen, I scoop up the end of the day in my palm–the covered, sharp tip of an insulin needle we used for Adam; an alcohol swab, still evaporating that clean, astringent smell; paper-torn wrappers. With the other hand, I lift an abandoned cup of water–probably the one Riley set down when she finished […]
58
Sep 1, 2017
Out of the corner of my eye, I see them kneeling in front of my son, knees pressed hard into the floor right there in front of the chair where Adam sits waiting for me, glancing at his watch. I’m too far away to hear them, but I can tell that they’re talking to him, […]
59
Aug 25, 2017
It’s an old, familiar, childhood question. If you had just one wish, and you knew it would come true… It’s a genie question, hovering in smoke, the answer thought-whispered over snuffed out candles, wispy and curling. Just once, it was a question of Biblical proportions, only God posed it differently, to a young king: Ask […]
60
Aug 18, 2017
To look at her, you’d not think her mighty, carrying that slice of notebook paper folded over her fingers, brassy hair tied in two smooth knots and pinned, finally, against her head and away from her face. She insists upon nothing in her eyes when she’s about her business, checking off important things in a […]