Why is my body betraying me? I’m only twenty-seven years old. This shouldn’t be happening, not to me. I sit down in the waiting room on one of the unsightly chairs that is the color of dijon mustard. I stare …
The casket shone like a magic trick under the pink lights, staged in front of a crucifix so ornate and beautiful that Jesus looked like he wanted to be nailed there. Henry sat across from it on a lumpy couch, …
After her son left for college, the empty-nester tried to grow a new one. She found her son’s first haircut clippings, golden strands stored neatly in a red velvet box.
With a shovel, she dug out grass and dirt. When …
Rupert Dakota had a brown thumb, and a pile of potatoes higher than a haystack. As high as the sky. Without buyers.
Rupert stood at the entrance to what they called the cellar, looking at the expanse of potatoes. Whatever …
When Abel was a young boy the Workmen’s Circle cemetery was a magical place, a jungle of sprawling weeds, untamed bushes, and wild ailanthus trees. During family burials he imagined that animals were looking on, listening to the Hebrew words …
Would he live or would he die? I stared at the news every night in the fall of 1994, unable to speak, unable to move, jonesing for information. It was karma for lying about where I was.
Art club was …
Springfield Technical Community College (Massachusetts, late 1970’s)
I was barely eighteen, making minimum wage as a cook at Denny’s and dating a newly minted lawyer. Whenever I’d visit his office, with its plump leather chairs, a state-of-the-art Radio Shack computer, …
She was out on the lake with her dog. A girl of maybe eleven or twelve with a black and white mutt. The dog ran ahead, the girl called his name, “Buster, stay close.” The girl was bundled from head …
My place in this world is small.
I still matter.
Darlene is a retired school counselor. She enjoys writing and spending time with friends and family.…
My brother Mike and I shiver in our thick winter coats, snow pants, and scarves as we walk with Uncle Emil to the bus stop at Halsted, three blocks from the duplex we share with our parents and baby sister. …