Lovey is twelve and living with her substitute family the day her period comes. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is. “Should we cancel the trip to the river?” Delilah, her substitute mother, asks. “Are you feeling blue?” Lovey is occasionally morose and Delilah has developed a regimen for it, in which she […]
I met Sebastian in a summer writing program to which I’d applied as a result of feeling lost again (my standing motivation, it seems, for anything). I hadn’t really expected to get in. “Why do we write?” we were asked, the first day. I found the question generic, and I leaned forward at the table […]
At parent-teacher conferences, Mr. B suggests that my son, Django, explore other genres over the summer. My son is gorgeous, broad-shouldered with curly-blonde surfer hair. “Do you really think that?” he wants to know. “Or do you just have to say that because of the standards?” He’s also a sharp one. A full grade ahead […]
Behind my eyes, a pure story is like a gazillion grains of untouched sand. Its telling a graceful sifting through open fingers. But when I open my eyes and look down life’s supposedly pristine coastline, I often find it jarring. “Hey, what’s that syringe doing there?” I have to ask. Or, “What’s with the broken […]
I was in Montana the night we lost my sister. But I was on my way home, too. What? I was. Montana was a bust. Like Brazil before it. But different, I suppose. Montana was a bust in an I-accidentally-moved-in-with-a-male-stripper-who-gets-into-knife-fights kind of way. Whereas with Brazil I had simply underestimated the impact of the third […]
Sometimes I like to let go and follow a blind path. Even if that path finds me crashing a convention at a nearby hotel. Keeping my distance and drinking alone. Even if that path offers up men who are brave enough to approach, but have no way to reach me. Because sometimes that path leads me […]
