Oralia
A heavy weight presses down on my chest. It feels like a chasm is forming under the breastplates covering my heart. I take a moment…
Stories Poems Essays
History Lessons
Mid-way through a week of walking the vales and fells of the Lakes | My new friend Judy asks: | What do your parents do?
Under Water
The Sunday I first went to the quarry was after I made Tito choose. He’d been back in the States a few weeks. This is what his mother…
Mumina, the Mouse and I
I arrive late at my writers group, stepping into the quiet swish of pens on paper, of fingers tapping on keyboards. I love that look of concentration…
Bring Me Your Yearning
Two days before the bicentennial and Madeline Harper’s tenth birthday, someone rowed an eighteen-foot Statue of Liberty constructed entirely of Venetian blinds…
The Psychiatric Patient Profiled in My Application
I hold the paper in my hand. My case worker is friendly, not callous or distant. I ask him to decode the letter I have received in the mail. I think it says what I hope it says…
Sunflowers
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about sunflowers—the kind that kept Van Gogh tethered to his body and that convinced Hannah Gadsby that human connection can shield us…
The Babies
The room is small, jail-like, with windows high in one wall. The air is humid. Breathing requires deep heavy intakes of energy. The bits of daylight filtering through…
Our Institutions
Over the last twelve months of life at the Alvarezes, from fall of ‘65 to fall ‘66, the seasons gained momentum. The autumn equinox passed.