I had no such marks on my body and feared growing one as I slept. If I were to do such a thing, this meant I would be like my mother: incalculable. I did not want to be like my mother. I wanted only …

Inside, I see Franny's black-and-white high school picture everywhere, the same one in different sizes: flaxen crew cut and upturned head, delicate cheekbones like his mother, shoulders squared in …

I was standing on the cold, dark tile of the bathroom floor when I realized I didn't know how to live without him. It was Sunday. I was barefoot, brushing my teeth. What happened was this: I decided …

The electronic symbol for ground looks like a sailboat on a tiny sea. The semaphore has an alphabet of two flags. Before Marconi’s wireless, to talk to people far away, one could beat a drum, blow …

  1. In Texas, a man burned the Mexican flag in front of the Alamo. He tried to get a permit to do it, but the city said no. They didn't issue permits for burning nylon or polyester or rayon in …

We in America have more taboos than we think and god knows that talking about race is one of them. But talking about class: well, that may be even more forbidden...

Imagine: an afternoon desert. The wilderness at its horizon. Together we're crossing a well-traveled path. Our destination? A river about thirty miles east of Jerusalem's walls. Who do you want to …

I thought if I wrote about Rory maybe that would get him out of my dreams. I was renting a house—four months rent paid up, nothing to do but write—from a professor of Archeology away on a dig. …

She begins it. In August of 1914. Twenty-seven years old, she is, to most an old maid and has only recently returned to South Carolina to teach. Flowers, bones, and skies you enter like a room are …