When I turned twelve and began to struggle with the higher notes, I faked it, lip-synching the words.
When I turned twelve and began to struggle with the higher notes, I faked it, lip-synching the words.
My brain Rolodexes forward, backward, cataloging things that won’t stay done as I fight to stay with this moment.
Not quietly at ninety, a few mourners, a cleric using dismal platitudes. But disastrously. Throngs crammed into pews.
I’d been warned not to stare but was lost in reverence, enchanted by our taut intimacy.
Before I can swipe left, you call.
The scrap of paper lay facedown on the pavement. I picked it up out of curiosity, or greed perhaps—maybe it’s valuable.
When I was eleven years old, my Dad took me to a meeting in a smoky, crowded union hall.
The day of the Presidential Fitness Test, we ninth graders are asked to grab hold of the thick rope in the middle of the gym floor and shimmy up to the red tape overhead, using arms and legs.
She sees me and freezes. Our eyes lock. Coincidence, not genetics, that they are the same blue.
Nervous and timid at my new job at the chain pharmacy, I was not prepared for conflict.
He drops me at a bus station and speeds away. I don’t know where I am or how to ask.
The sink felt cool and solid beneath my shaky hands. I steadied myself over it before looking up into the mirror.
Whenever I visit we mostly sit as familiar strangers and talk about the tea. Once in a while, though, there’s a small window, five minutes max, when her eyes sparkle.
I’m asked to keep Theo alive while she’s away, his rations a small pinch of flakes.
Footsteps up the driveway, hours too early. Clinking of keys on the hook, coins in the can, wallet on the counter.
After I'd eaten breakfast, I went outside. It was cool, the sun earnest but dew still dampening the grass.
“We’ve been coming here for six weeks, and it works for J and I, but does it work for our son? Will they love him and his differences?”
It only happened once and even in his locked-up world he appeared to immediately realize his mistake.
I fill the trough with feed and the sisters rustle and squawk and flap their landlocked wings. A few black-and-white feathers go flying over the shed beams.
We passed a line of peahens. “I wish we’d passed elephants,” she said.