When it thaws the worms will move again, I said, among new rocks. They will work the soil into lace until the rains lift them to the grass, where the birds will part their beaks and bow down to them. …
At the time of my commission, I did not know all the things this man would do, which means I did not know federal troops would be ordered into the cities, that water cannons would be fired, that …
I make you marzipan from scratch, hang a new birdfeeder outside your window, repot the kalanchoe, reseason cast iron. Eventually, the house is like a flowerbed you laid out with everything in its …
The sun sets. In the line to board the bus, Wayde decides that he only wants one thing out of this journey: an apology. That is the only way he will accept his father. Wayde cares about the hunger, …
One afternoon of his every-other-Saturdays, my dad took the crossbow gingerly, respectfully from its box on the top shelf of his bedroom closet and led us out onto the apartment’s second-story back …
Jacob opened up an entirely new door for us. After that, we often spoke to the camera directly, to our therapist, when it felt like speaking to each other was getting us nowhere. I loved how …
Mother and the children had never killed before. That was Father’s work. All month long the rain came down, and gray-faced Father coughed in his bed, shrinking into a yellowed quilt. Mother and the …
The first skin I tattooed was orange peel. Supposedly the texture is similar to humans. I bought a kilo of oranges to practice on before you agreed. You came down for the weekend, watched as I tested …
I’m very good at these stories. The bitter-sweet, could-have-been, wish-it-was-so ones that are prettier and more precious than happy-endings. Stories are better cut short, end before it begins, so …
It happened in a matter of seconds, this overlay of violence in my mind, that took us into another life, and then it was gone. Perhaps what I wanted was to have my future thrust upon me. No, I …
She wasn’t after beauty, really—which was what most of the women who sought her out got wrong—she was after women who already knew that pain could be a tunnel and that pleasure could be the …
You’re sore. It’s your shoulders mostly—they hurt from swiping through hundreds of men. Tylers, Johns. Think about sending a message. Then, think about a massage. You have health insurance but …
There is a man in India who is every morning attacked by crows. I heard this on the radio not long ago. This man, he once rescued a crow that had become disoriented in his garden. And since then when …
The man has a gun. He walks into a bank with the gun. He sees himself from the outside, enacting a scene from a movie. He shows the gun to the security guard, who sits down, and he shows the gun to …
She’s there on one of those red-herring March afternoons that make you think spring’s arrived, when everyone pours outdoors gasping, like they’re emerging from underwater. Her parents’ house …
Brigitte watches her mother swat at a mosquito sending ashes from her cigarette into her coarse gray hair. She’s smoked it past the filter, an orange nub in her fingers the size of a peanut. …
We’re filming on the verandah of the Golden Age Movie Ranch in Los Angeles County. 3 AM is my sister. She’s the third attempt in the Audrey-Marilyn series. They call me 7 MH, the seventh in the …
Rachel felt small and held in the green bowl of the clearing beneath the boundless bright sky. She felt a tug in her middle, some big, sweet sadness, and knew she would always feel this way now, no …
For a while I thought maybe something was wrong with me, like you sort of hope there is when you're a teenager.
I let him stand there for a few minutes, waving his arms while he rambled on about the wonderful days of our youth. When he finally fell silent, I told him that I had no idea who he was.