Dad appears over my right shoulder as I attempt to rub the bloodstain from my undies
Dad appears over my right shoulder as I attempt to rub the bloodstain from my undies
Mom faces the stove, her hands wrapped behind her back, twisting the red ties of an apron.
The border guard shouts words I don’t know, dropping my passport into a locked box strapped to his waist.
The neighbours had promised to look after my brother Stephen’s grave, but the graveyard lay locked and abandoned …
Luckily, my partner knows I am constantly searching for a new title for the self-help book I have written.
My thirteen-year-old taps the table three times before launching into her poem.
We braved the Daredevil Dive at Six Flags a month before you left.
After a two-year virus hiatus, she opened the door on the first knock.
It was the top of the third and our pitcher was blowing up.
With blue and purple powders, the artist had chalked the pavement while watching the skies.
The man standing in the front of the room was wearing multicolored swim trunks, tank top, flip-flops, sunglasses, saying “Bonjour” as people entered, then “take a seat, please.”
“Your mom’s got something to tell you boys.”
It was a cozy room with plush chairs, but no amount of throw pillows would make me comfortable.
Words flew free and wild, no safety net, no rules, no brakes.
On the beach we taste salt when we speak.
As our ten-car train cranked up the 105-foot-tall chain-lift hill for the ninety-degree one-hundred-foot drop, I regretted hopping on.
Two eyes, haunting. Ten fingers, gripping. You hike your Elmo backpack higher.
Each morning, I see my blurry face in the shaving mirror that you left suction-cupped to my shower wall.
My grandma is obsessed with Psalm 24.
I sway back and forth anxiously while keeping my eyes riveted to the scene unfolding on our 65-inch TV.