They call me The Dunce, but I know the answer.
They call me The Dunce, but I know the answer.
As I approached my parents’ tailgate, I spotted him immediately: my prodigal brother, fresh from eight months in rehab.
Four upper teeth, three lower, You bounce, smiling, leaning on the red Arabian armrest passed down from three families.
"Why always give me the chicken leg?" my five-year-old asked as I placed it in her bowl.
“Lisa,” I yelled as I toweled dry, fresh from the shower.
Trisha Yearwood’s “She’s in Love with the Boy” plays and suddenly it’s 1996 and I’m in the grocery store with chill bumps on my sunburnt legs.
I streamed a new NBC show about a neurodivergent doctor.
Pink and black dots constellate the toilet bowl.
I only knew of two kinds of hysterectomies: total or partial.
Today is all about the Earth.
The game starts, as it always does, on the mulch by the back slide.
After Michael died by suicide I began compulsively lying to strangers.
A burning scent signals me to turn towards the stove.
Pine needles. They’re everywhere, mixing with red clay at the base of the long drive.
Trusted watering can in hand I approach my greenhouse.
They enter the dance studio in an energetic buzz—tiny humans in pink leotards with bulging little bellies.
My grandfather taught me, leaning over his pool table, cigar stuck in his teeth as he squinted at the ball.
While the others switch partners, we stay together, working on our steps, fumbling and laughing.
You can’t tell from the photo, but I was completely undone.
Friday, 2 a.m. I’m walking home through darkness, sobering fast, from the dive bar I am barely old enough to work at.