He lays across my shins. An odd spot for sure, but he’s a toddler, so everything he does is a bit odd, a bit exploratory, a bit like something I wouldn’t choose. I can feel his heartbeat in the bones of my shins and I have to wonder how this can be comfortable. I raise …
I remember when he slept in my bed, more nights than not, for four months. His evening routine was more meticulous than mine, a feat that was impressive on good days and increasingly annoying on the rest as my toothpaste bill doubled and phone timers interrupted songs from the bathroom. Toothpaste on the brush, start …
Something is hanging heavy over the front desk. Behind it the receptionist wears a crown of lights and sensors. I’ve never seen anything like it. All the patients ask her if she’s alright. A woman-maybe-nurse appears, starts going on about some nameless painkillers with the thickest South Philly accent I’ve ever heard, no, you really …
There is a Hospital Just for Eyes in Old City by Lindsay Hargrave Read More »
It is not, as it so often seems along these seams of you and I, what is the matter with us but rather, what is the matter of us that we are feeling for. It is easy to confuse the two. * You have been promised- the first person– the prayer mat and the prophet. …
Oh Lord of On-going Challenges, I knowest not who thou art but in this time of plague and lockdown, wherefore hast thou bestowed a commercial power washer upon the man next door? Outside his dwelling place are three vans and two BMWs. They sparkle like the stars in the firmament. His front yard is scoured clean …
“I’m on the fence about this one,” my husband says. He looks at me and tugs at the neckline of a navy and turquoise striped sweater. I shake my head and wrinkle my nose. Two piles sit on the bed next to me, keepers folded and donations haphazard. The heater comes on with a whoosh. …
She doesn’t take stock in this moment until years later once she’s already married him. The high school library is the size of her current-day apartment. The aisles between the shelves are wide. The books, she remembers, are mostly paperbacks, and there was that one about telekinesis that comes up in her mind often. How …
I’m very particular about plums. Put it this way, I can’t abide the inevitable sag of a Victoria and the way the stone always comes loose inside. I won’t do woolly ones. If juice seeps out on the bite, that’s no good either. Plum juice is effectively pure glycerine and if it gets half a …
The night I couldn’t find my mother’s grave, I cried into my collar. The cemetery had grown, bloated in a way that only spirits could tolerate. Mortals, they’d have complained about the hassle, all of that dust and noise. I noticed how new stretches of road had been paved, and how fresh blades of grass …
Fi turns the lights off to call her father. She sits next to her unlit lamp, she adores the black shade with gold birds sitting on branches, and the slender stem with a round of crystal near the top, curved like a ball-gown. The lamp is the only piece of her in this house, the …
“I wish I could have told her more. Explain better why she was here.” Dad takes his steamy glasses off and wipes them, puts them back on. His grief reminds me that he is still someone’s little boy, always will be. His guilt reminds me of his hard choice, one I might need to make …
A huge beast had flung itself against our walls. Words and pictures caught inside us were retrieved to heave up to our conversations. This is how we feel. This is how we understand. The first Saturday was spent in hand-wringing agitation. Our ship was built in days. Rags of plans and lengths of hope were …