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. …
Had there been an angel in the room, none of them would have noticed. The four children were playing Monopoly. The eldest was winning, as usual. “Advance token to nearest Railroad,” he read. His silver doggie flew to B&O Railroad without touching the squares. Pietrov was always the doggie. “Body Odor!” yelled the other three …
The glass gives way and cascades down onto the driver’s seat. One piece sticks into the backrest. His backrest. The windshield took six or seven or eight blows with the shovel, but it worked. I catch my breath, hands on knees, and when I straighten up to assess my handiwork, the car looks like it’s …
Ellie’s love life is suffering from the soundtrack in her head. The music scares away her dates. They can’t hear it, but it bothers them nonetheless. Perhaps it’s her humming. Or sometimes, the way she holds an expression a little too long as she surfs an unheard crescendo. Her stubborn pace to a particular rhythm. …
There’s a gateway to hell in the men’s room at Cory’s Pub. It’s in the second stall, and you have to shut the door and sit on the toilet for it to work. One minute you’re squatting on the Jon, the next you’re in the underworld. I went there by accident the first time. I …
‘I learned Twinkle Twinkle Little Star today.’ He picks me up with ease and sits me on the stool with the cushion so I can reach. ‘Let’s hear it then.’ With his hand on my shoulder, he watches as I clunk my little fingers across the keys. They move awkwardly and I tie myself in knots as I tap out the uneven …
A man I once knew used to take me to Madame Jo Jo’s in Soho. His place wasn’t far away, just behind that telecom tower in Tottenham Court Road. After our Friday night frolics, he’d pinch my cheeks till they were rosy as a rag doll’s, then untie me from the bed. I’d jiggle my …
Old cement dust left her hands stained white, but she couldn’t leave a mark on the concrete. She smoothed out the ledge of the tower landing as if it were the bed sheet she tucked back every morning for fear of wrapped knuckles and dirty looks. Hospital corners pulled tight as a choke hold. A …
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 …
Of course there was a cruelty to it, I see that now. It was like someone had yanked the veil from our playground pecking order: a densely banded arm confirming top tier status, the outcast as exposed as their own naked skin. At the peak of the craze we were looming five hours a day …
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 …