Before you stopped talking, you told me you were nervous about what might happen to you in the days or hours leading up to the end. It was the only time the two of us talked about your impending death without dancing around the pale, cold particulars of it.  “I want you to promise to remember me this way,” you told me, sitting up in bed. “Not in my pajamas obviously, but I want you to remember me how I am right now and not what I might be like in a few weeks or whenever this

We are waiting for our flight.  We are a group of four (the Beatles but worse): Alan, Susie, Paul, me. We are playing eye-spy and two-truths-one-lie and all manner of exciting games. We are attempting handstands.  We are still waiting for our flight. We are researching the history and etymology of goldfish on Wikipedia.  We are eating all our food, a royal buffet of sandwiches and apples and salted almonds. We are talking to an old lady—she is going to Malta to spread her hus

Olivia has seen pictures of the men. Pictures in the big brown book on the glass coffee table at Opa’s house, along with lots of letters that made words underneath them, words she can’t read because she’s only five and in kindergarten and just learning her ABCs. The pictures are of her ancestors,  Mommy says, and Olivia practices saying it, an-ses-ters , a funny word that slithers and squirms on her tongue like a rattlesnake and makes her laugh because that’s a lot of s-es. 

My friend has written a poem about a pair of deer—one with antlers, the other without. In the poem, they are in a cemetery filled with green grass and large trees. The antlered deer fixates on the poem’s speaker. He watches her with his whole body. And the antlers too: like antennae reading the air for threat. She is no threat. And, the speaker claims, the deer determines that.  My friend loves deer and wants a tattoo of one on her shoulder.   We are talking about deer and w

It hovers in the sky like a baby killer whale. I avoid day light because at night it’s harder to make out, but it’s still unmistakable....

You’re eight and at a Pick-Your-Own farm in Southern Ontario, the sun pressing down the part in your hair until it feels like one long...

A dog-eared rag of duct tape flaps on our plane’s wing outside my window as we take off; my cell signal falling away with the earth,...

Remember the night we fell in love? A pebble beach under us, stars above.  I leaned in to kiss you and tasted beer and sea salt. Lying on...

You've never known what it felt like to fuck someone like you hate them. She tries her hardest to convince this stranger dressed as a nun...

You ask to stop at the café, that pretty little one on Berry Street, because you’re thirsty and need caffeine, and I ask you if I’m...

Amy talks to the space behind the refrigerator now.  And she only wears blue. When her mother dresses her in the morning, any unblue...

He sat next to the elderly pilot’s hospital bed, hand raised in absolution as he read from the approved script: “Benevolent spirit,...

If only you could pretend you don’t care about the superficially courteous relationship with your in-laws who also pretend to have risen...

The detainees in the large holding cell appear rather harmless, probably students, laborers, middle-aged professionals. If anything, I...

This Sentence is False, Whether You Like It or Not   This  (1) Sentence (2)  is  (3) False (4)  ,Whether  (5) You  (6) Like (7)  It (8)...

Early on, when food remains on ransacked shelves and you can find still-crisp apples rolled into dusty shadows and your mouth fills with...

At the time, it seemed like a great idea and really cheap when you work out interest rates on a brand new partner every 325 Earth days,...

In child terms: share candy. Step in front of no one. When a whine or sob bubbles up in the throat, swallow hard . Do not call attention....

Sometimes, Morgan thinks about the movie American Beauty . Not necessarily about the movie, and definitely not Kevin Spacey, but about...

Sometimes Billy is an Elephant. Sometimes not. When Billy is an elephant, he is trunk and tusk and floppy ears, and he never forgets that...