by Jason Grant The entire king-sized bed is mine now, but I can’t seem to move from the left side to the right because on the nights you were here—laying there—if I dared move from my side to yours in the middle of the night it was like I-was-crossing-some-boundary you-needed…
by K. M. Frantz On the eve of your fortieth birthday, I sat and glanced at the chalkboard hanging on the wall adjacent to my chair. On its surface were colorful reminders I’ve left for my family—usually things pertaining to our day-to-day. Occasionally, I’d give a welcoming shout-out to a visiting…
by Jeanne Althouse I was born in a hallway. My pregnant Mother had lovely brown hair curled in the style of Ingrid Bergman in the movie Casablanca. She defined her lips with dark red from a stick, her nose with loose white powder she stored in a gold case and…
by Ann Hosler Water trailed down the window in rivulets, tracing the contours of my ghosted face. You wished me a happy birthday, nestled in sterile sheets of your hospital bed. Freshly woken from the coma of your surgery, you couldn’t remember my name. The surgeon removed a basketball-sized spleen…
by Jory Pomeranz In some old encyclopedias, you will find under the article on Spain, the border between Spain and Portugal is 620 miles long. In the same encyclopedia, under the article on Portugal, it says the border is 760 miles long. It’s the same border. The geometry we learned…
by Rebecca Carenzo “If you can guess what I have in my pocket, you can have it.” “Excuse me?” I ask, turning to face the harried-looking stranger who’d just addressed me out of the blue. I didn’t have a chance to finish my answer before I felt the forceful jab…
by Anne Eston I hold my head the way I held that robin’s egg when I was six. Unsafe in the nest Grandpa stole (he said it fell out of a tree), the egg sat. I took it, was careful… I couldn’t take care of it. Didn’t think it would…
by Robert Dinsmoor When I was four, my mother took me to see “Bambi,” a movie in which the title character’s mother is brutally killed near the beginning. I cried inconsolably. “What happens if you die?” I asked my mother. “What would become of me?” Her answer was as simple…
by Carol Lindsey “Girls, come on,” Mildred Smith called. “We’ll miss the bus.” Mildred looked over the two girls bounding down the stairs. “Very nice, Evelyn. Rhonda Sue, where are your gloves? A lady never leaves the house without being properly dressed.” Nine-year-old Rhonda Sue pulled a pair of white…