My husband's nose changed first—a nearly imperceptible spot-the-difference puzzle on a face I'd known for twenty-two years. Through our kitchen's bay windows, the morning sunlight highlighted his ... [+]
My husband's nose changed first—a nearly imperceptible spot-the-difference puzzle on a face I'd known for twenty-two years. Through our kitchen's bay windows, the morning sunlight highlighted his ... [+]
Mamma always had a love for other people's possessions. One of my earliest memories is walking to the park, my hand firmly tucked into hers. I was an impulsive child, and likely would have darted into ... [+]
We are simple people. For us, fulfillment comes from hammering a piece of iron into a useful shape; from plowing the black soil for the new crop; from kneading the dough for the bread we all need. My ... [+]
There's nothing I love more than eating. Mmm, yes. Fat Boy loves a good meal. I enjoy the crunch, the squish, even the quietest sizzles as I grind every little particle between my molars. I cherish ... [+]
The liftoff is like an elevator. You know that feeling you get when you're going up? Like your stomach is getting left behind? It feels like that. Remember when we were kids and we were staying at ... [+]
There is no cheerful clatter of pans, or old Beatles records spinning in the living room. No warm cinnamon smell fills the air – only burnt coffee. For a moment, I'm half expecting Papa to swoop me ... [+]
Fred is an arsonist—and, Fred is not an arsonist. Let me explain: Fred has thought of fire, its power and grace, for a long time. Perhaps since he was a child. He often watched fires, mesmerized by ... [+]
January 26, 1906Forty-seven days have passed and the bananas in my kitchen are still green. They remain untouched and unmoved since I brought them home from market. To my eye they appear ordinary in ... [+]
My new neighbor was a hoarder. She hoarded everything. Crystals, pink bakery boxes—she even took in children. Each one was flawed: too restless, not bright enough, a daisy-shaped head. The sound of ... [+]
"It's an old building," Becky said, when Peter asked her. "Do you get them in your apartment, too?" She'd given him a look, then, as if she thought he was trying to score an invite into her place, as ... [+]
The seventh day in my new flat, I found a worm in the fridge. It was flat, black and dead. I quite like interesting animals, but not this one – it looked remarkably like a leech. Where had it come ... [+]
It had been nearly fourteen years, but there you were on my morning commute. On your way to work like nothing had happened. Both of us on our ways to work as if nothing had happened. You looked good ... [+]
Our new house really felt like a home, with cockroaches and two pit bulls and a palm tree and a chain-link fence. On that first day, I heated up a can of kidney beans for breakfast and ate it sitting ... [+]
I reached for the control strip and tapped the edit icon. Immediately, the scene changed to a woodland, dark fir trees casting long shadows beneath a heavy winter sky. For background effect, I added ... [+]
When I get home from Sunday Service, I strip my pressed white shirt in the living room. I step out of my slacks. Peel off the tight black socks. I fumble naked for my dive skin, the black and blue ... [+]
On his way out the door to a meeting with a client, the husband said, "We should have a baby," and the wife, pointing to one of the windows that overlooked the driveway, said, "We already have an ... [+]
There is a story and it goes like this. There is a tower of brick and stone, raised up like a mountain. Its peak puts holes in the bottoms of clouds. A princess sits by the window at the top, and she ... [+]