It’s the last weekend in September, and it’s warm for a fall night in North Dakota. I’m in the backseat of a Ford Zephyr, losing my...

Content warnings: Mental illness, suicidality, self-harm, disordered eating, addiction, death, sexual assault. Notebook Fragments:...

Reasons I Cried During Pregnancy Part I and II* Written in 2017 Part I I tend to be a bit of a crybaby already so it shouldn't have come...

The Midwest is a small-talk, large-silences place. Growing up in one of its small towns meant often not knowing the secrets were there,...

Suddenly, it was second grade and we were allowed to walk to school together without a parent. We had to cross at the corner. If we...

George Frederic Handel Hotel If you happen to be staying at the George Frederic Handel Hotel during your time in Dublin, and you’ve made...

As we hit our first bout of turbulence, drifting across the Pacific, you flutter kick within me. My life has become monumental, yet I am...

She is spirited, they say, a kind word for difficult. She is easily frustrated and prone to tantrums. Her preschool teacher once...

I think of her when I enter my kitchen. I think of her when I see fresh beets, used ashtrays, gleaming Oldsmobiles, or bright red hair...

We journeyed for three days and nights, o’er land and sea to the distant island of Crete, ignoring our parents’ concerns. We could have...

prissing quietly mother's hair frizzing around own jawline—curse your nose unhooked as glasses slip down. you have been asked to watch...

We didn’t think anything of it when the chickens started dying. There were always problems with animals hunting our birds. We lived on a...

Have you ever watched the sunset at cloud level? Watched it dip below the cloudline while you were right there with it, right there in...

We are standing next to the car, and the sky is an open wound, misty and oozing, shades of pink beginning to interrupt the bruised gray....

Here’s a picture of me, my parents, and my brother Chris, back in 1982. They are dressed nicely, perhaps for church or some event. I am...

My 27-year-old mother is forever blasting down the bubbling asphalt of late-summer Mississippi in a sky-blue 1978 Mercury Cougar—so wide...

Stranger in the City (Abijan, Ivory Coast, 1998) I was unable not to take a second look when I saw them walk through the hotel lobby to...

Lana lit my hair on fire a couple weeks ago trying to light a stogie, so she crinkles her arm when we embrace to avoid a repeat singe....

A word from the author: As a trauma therapist I was invited to Harlem Hospital to talk to the ER staff, ambulance crews, and doctors and...

I think of the night I decided I couldn’t wait to not be thirteen anymore. It wasn’t a far drive; I only lived a few blocks up the...