“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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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…

Clair had a love-hate relationship with his Uncle Mike, who always took him along when he went hunting, shooting, or fishing with his drinking buddies. He taught Clair how to…

I didn’t have a lot of friends at college. I grew up on the Brooklyn–Queens border. When I was accepted to NYU, a 40-minute commute away, I had to decide:…

All summer long, mum dropped heavy hints, and made carefully crafted statements. Money did not grow on trees, she said. I had my life, and now I urgently needed to…

Your last name is Scully, like The X Files. And you’re a redhead. In third grade you move across the country to a new school. Two boys start picking on…

I misuse the word. After bantering, you lug a fat dictionary from your desk, riffle the pages, offer me a stage whisper sigh, and begin reading the definition of ambivalence.…