August. Miraculously, I’ve kept the bugs at bay for the first summer in years, though they taunt me from their hiding place.
August. Miraculously, I’ve kept the bugs at bay for the first summer in years, though they taunt me from their hiding place.
Funeral-pyre ashes rise into fireflies floating around a baby sister resting on her brother’s lap.
On a sweaty afternoon in Massachusetts, we four strolled down the abandoned road to the beaver pond.
We both are old. That seems to be the problem.
Under the salon lights, a silver thread emerges from my dark brown hair without a lick of shame.
I stare up at her through the slats in the stable door.
I frequently visited a gelato shop near my house for their honigmelone flavour.
I drove the Dynasty for nine hours straight listening to a single Melissa Ferrick CD, chain smoking Marlboros, drinking Dr. Pepper, and sometimes crying . . .
The principal asks to speak with me, sending me into a spiral of oh-shits and what-the-hells.
When Mother came to Guangzhou for eye surgery, my elder sister took night shifts; my younger sister took leave and flew to cook congee. I cared for her afterward.
On the return flight from Texas, I knew I wouldn’t end up teaching Biblical Hebrew to Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Mennonites.
A handwritten sign on the elevator door tells me it’s “broke.”
The pinkish-purple tentacle reached across my palm, oozing and unfurling onto my wrist, caressing my hand upturned towards the starlit heavens.
We finish the night’s bedtime reading, my kindergartener son’s latest lost tooth under his pillow.
On the hidden road of deep country we head over sandy roads east to west.
I sat beside my Christmas tree, remembering Christmas Eves when my two grandkids, mostly grown now, were still small.
I’d emptied the apartment and stuffed the car with the last of my belongings.
“My parents pay you enough to get me ice cream whenever I want,” says the kid I pick up every day from school.
Early Thursday morning her time zone; late Wednesday mine.
“Let us see! Please!” I demanded. “No, you will just scream and say eww,” my grandmother said.