Water Music
byLadies JUST OUTSIDE THE SANCTUARY, A SLAP STINGS THE METAL LADIES-ROOM DOOR. Her soprano sugars my ears: “He doesn’t know what happened to it yet.” A low sigh: the alto,…
Stories
Last Bus to Stonehenge
byAS THE BUS AMBLED THROUGH RUSH HOUR, Penny looked at the ticket she picked up from the ‘free’ table at work. That last-minute decision, plus traffic, made her late so…
Picking Cherries
byMARGO VELA’S FATHER SPOKE TO HER FROM HIS URN IN THE BACK SEAT. His words interrupted a silence she’d craved for years. Somehow, he’d found a way past his metal…
Blossom
byTHE DAY MY FIANCÉE, BLOSSOM, WALKED OUT ON ME, the potted plant that adorned our kitchen began to bloom. Great, trumpet-shaped flowers—purple, pink, peach, and white—drooped like lazy, cumbersome skin…
Radiation Therapy and You
byAFTER HE MAPPED AND TATTOOED ME, Bill gave me a pamphlet titled Radiation Therapy and You. It was less than thirty pages long with large print, so I read the…
Billy Walker, Hero
bySEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD BILLY WALKER, driving home from bagging at Win-Dixie, eases his beat-up Kia through cackling pea-sized hail on State Road 40, right outside Ocala, on the rim of the national…
Witnessed Through a Windowpane
byTHE SUN SETS LACKADAISICALLY LIKE MOLASSES ON HOT SUMMER NIGHTS. Sometimes there is a soft breeze that pushes the pieces of trash across the parking lot, lightly scraping the pavement….
August Cherries
byON THE SUN-SOAKED HILL’S OF APRIL’S CALIFORNIA, I remember the way November’s New York air ripped through her. *** The last day I see her the city lies frozen over,…
The Waster
by1. TWENTY MINUTES INTO WHAT THE HISTORY MAJOR’S DATE—her mother’s friend’s son—had referred to as “the film about lesbians,” a man who’d been sitting at the end of the front…
Femur
byWE ARE TWELVE WHEN WE SHARE OUR FIRST CIGARETTE ON THE BALCONY OF A POST-WAR BUDGET MOTEL. She wears her mother’s dress and I wear ill-fitting, low-rise jeans and together…