Sibley set dinner in front of the nursery children, beef stew and thick slices of bread from which they could pluck the carrots and soft middles respectively. Naughty children, she signed to them as she took her seat at the head of the table and spread her napkin over her lap. A chorus of waving […]

I. How to Build a Mourning Dove First, take your husband’s awkward, enthusiastic letters from the night-stand drawer, the ones he wrote on his way from England to India. Take those smooth papers and wad them up tight. Keep your sorrow out of your actions; let the sadness of the letters speak. Use your anger […]

I was out when Lisle found the pictures. She was gone by the time I got home. Leaving was unlike her, but she did it anyway, packing her things and taking off while I was out doing the Saturday afternoon shopping. She’d left me a note on the kitchen table. I sat down to read […]

On Wednesday nights, I talk to my dead sister though a silver mirror. It is always Wednesday, and always night, no matter what the season of the year. In winter, I can begin speaking to her in the early hours of the evening, after the last rays of the sun have slipped into darkness. In […]

Only two more months to the end of school, and like a tantalizing forerunner to summer, the fair came to town. Sal saw the carnies setting up rides as the bus crawled by the arena parking lot that Thursday morning. The Sizzler, the Tumbler, the Tilt-a-Whirl. The Ferris Wheel, unlit and seatless, leaning on its […]

i. In the beveled mirror over Don’s dining table, mine is an ex-wife’s face. Broomstick hair crackles around hollow, harried eyes that look like a beaten dog’s. I could lick or bite without warning. My reflection regards the divorce papers Don’s lawyers drafted to rob me of the house we bought with Don’s coin and […]

Wendy was wrapped in an old green blanket. She smelled the musk of it, the smell of mold-eaten clothing hovering on the edge of her awareness. She was trapped in the blanket, suffocating in the blanket. From outside of her cocoon she heard footsteps against metal, footsteps on broken leaves. Footsteps snapping a twig or […]

One fine May afternoon the Cavalier popped out of the baking ovens of the Giant King’s castle. Since he was intended from the first for the King’s only daughter and only child, no effort had been spared. The heat of the kitchen shimmered in the sunlight as he was brought forth. It is a truism […]