In the office, she wrote everything on yellow paper: legals pads, while-you-were-outs, carbon copies, and sticky notes. Her eyes, so accustomed to the faded yellow of her workdays, had difficulty ... [+]
My older sister Nancy and I walk down the street together. In our hands are plastic grocery bags that smell like shame and old onions. We are going trick-or-treating. I know we're getting too old fo ... [+]
There's a ghost in my house. I hear her singing. A little girl. Why is it always a little girl? The light through the window is barely enough to see by, but the sky outside is very pale. Clouds slide ... [+]
We spent hours at the store. Allison examined each animal one by one. She studied their movements, their noises and their smells. She looked at their feathers, spots, fur patterns, and colors. She ... [+]
Gregory Ashton set out alone from his apartment in Mar Vista, California for an extended walk. It was spring in the year 20–, and Gregory needed exercise. His doctor had recently diagnosed him as ... [+]
My father was a doctor. We never got the doctoring bug. He never spoke to us about medicine. Instead, he took us on road trips and taught us to play catch, even me. When we were little, he would read ... [+]
Each morning his face flushed as he remembered the boy's words, "I want that shovel. It's just like yours." And each morning he fell to his knees, extended his arms, then plunged his hands into the ... [+]
Long ago, an incorporeal god of light named Belgrin flew over the face of the earth searching for new and interesting objects to illuminate. When he found a young woman named Isil, he stopped. He was ... [+]
He had earned the stamp of "loser" in his father-in-law's eyes. Worse, he was less a man to his wife Jean. When a possum tried to move in a few months after they purchased their little two-bedroom ... [+]
After I left Tom, I rented a house next to a cemetery. My mother offered to help me move. Standing in the gravel lot where I parked my car, she regarded the one-story clapboard partially hidden in ... [+]
The cool breeze drifts in from the Pacific Ocean through the banana plant leaves. Shadows dance across the pastel pallet of the bedspread; the charcoal nude woman looks over her shoulder. Jesus clasps ... [+]
There was no sunlight that day, and flowers with banners naming the giver had no aroma. The Godfather theme music played in Maria's head while a cast of characters, like sepia photos in her mother's ... [+]
My friend Matty believed he could fly. "I have the cape and everything," he told me one afternoon. We were playing knights and dragons in his backyard when he pointed to the roof. "You want to try?"I ... [+]
She danced naked in the rain, her palms upward to accept the droplets of moisture. Captivated by her own imagination, lost in a world of her own creation, a world where outsiders weren't welcome, she ... [+]
Harold Gates slowed the snow-topped yellow taxi and edged it along the slushy curb to a stop where she stood, shivering in a tattered wool coat in a January blizzard on the steps of her unlit ... [+]
Near midnight she pedals her rented bike past Checkpoint Charlie. Vacant, but suitably restored, the off-white, utilitarian guard box occupies the middle of the street, protected from a barrage of ... [+]