Your baby is due in two weeks. Naturally, I'm over the moon about this, but I'm also feeling a bit sentimental . . . hence this letter. So here I am at the kitchen table, thinking about you and ... [+]
Your baby is due in two weeks. Naturally, I'm over the moon about this, but I'm also feeling a bit sentimental . . . hence this letter. So here I am at the kitchen table, thinking about you and ... [+]
They always say the final sense to go is hearing, but touch lasts right 'til the end. Not over the whole body, though; I can't feel Dot's hand in mine, but this fucking diaper itches like blazes. I ... [+]
The realtor moves from room to room in silence. Charlotte and I follow, anxiously awaiting his verdict. Through the kitchen, the living room, the study. Upstairs, in and out of bedrooms. He ... [+]
Terrydale was a hamlet much too small to be located on any map, and so war came to it as it comes to such places—not through the trampling of armies over its quaint town square, or the burning of ... [+]
The DeliverBot drops the box at my feet and wheezes out a metallic "Happy Birthday" before flying away. At first, I think it's a mistake, because it isn't my birthday. At least, I don't think it is ... [+]
I had just gotten out of the gas station and bought what I usually bought on my little Sunday night trips—a pack of reds, a water bottle (one of the purified waters. Spring water is quite gross to ... [+]
My daughters run across the hard-packed sand, their blonde hair—Maureen's hair—streaming out behind them. They are three little replicas of my wife. As always, the worry grips my heart with icy ... [+]
It was the summer of '82, my first year at Saint Vincent's. I'd just arrived in the city, a newly minted nurse from the Midwest, and taken an apartment on Perry Street with three other nurses. He was ... [+]
It was the splatter of liquid on my face that woke me. Shitty-quality beer, with a taste of loam. Awareness returned as it puddled beneath me, where the tree roots grew against my back. Feet on the ... [+]
"So, you're happy, huh?" he says in disbelief.
He asks me this question several times during our two-hour get-together, trying to understand how I could feel so much happier about my life than he
... [+]
Sarah feels bricked up, even though she's riding her bike. She feels caged, because of where she's riding her bike: to a coffee shop to meet an ex she's not sure she wants to meet. He called her to ... [+]
Harold Gates slowed the snow-topped yellow taxi and edged it along the slushy curb to a stop where she stood, shivering in a tattered wool coat in a January blizzard on the steps of her unlit ... [+]
This story contains adult themes and is not appropriate for young or sensitive readers.
I met Sarkas at a club called Pose. Rolling on molly, eager to swallow the world, dancing with our hips
... [+]
On the days I visited the care center, I'd walk past this used bookshop on a quiet sidestreet. There were these four books in the shop window that always caught my eye. Other books would come and go ... [+]
Not long after she moved – ties cut, no looking back, he'd never find her on that side of town anyway, if he bothered to look – she found a string of Christmas lights at the thrift store when ... [+]
I remember when my world divided into male and female, when the girls screamed "Shaun has cooties!" across the playground and flushed with what I thought was anger. I remember being in a closet ... [+]
First thing every day, I count out the same colorful cocktail of medications into Mother's four containers: morning, midday, evening meal and nighttime. Two pink pills shortly after waking up, and ... [+]
Mr. MacInnes had decided it was time to talk to Brian about his appearance. He didn't want to, lord knows he wasn't a stickler for such things, but lately it had all gotten a bit out of hand. It ... [+]