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 ... [+]
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 ... [+]
The weather was good today, you answer whenever I ask how are you, how was your day. I don't know when we stopped talking about what mattered the most because you won't tell me. I ask are you ... [+]
It began at a sports bar, the kind of place the realtor would call "happy-go-lucky." In other words, if your barstool wasn't sticky, assume it had just been swabbed clean by CSI. There was graffiti ... [+]
It was real cold that night, not just Miami cold, and it was late. I'd had to wait until the girls were asleep to go out into the pre-Christmas lunacy of the mall because my wife and I were keeping ... [+]
The name on the chart, Winnaker, tightened my throat. Funny how, decades later, a word can evoke a memory that evokes a physical response. It's a good thing the evil woman's name hadn't been Smith ... [+]
Jake lay in the darkness, the sun creeping under the shade...thinking why should he get out of bed. He had no place to go, no one to see and nobody would be coming to visit. He probably wouldn't ... [+]
He was reaching for the top shelf then stopped. He moved his eyes to the next, lower shelf down and chose a jar. His hair was sheet white and his body frame resembled my father, tall and heavy set ... [+]
She didn't think herself a racist. She'd had black school friends, worked with black women at the restaurant, and watched Oprah daily.
But when her seven-year-old, white daughter brought home a
... [+]
I was licking salt from the rim of my glass when Asli told me that elderly pelicans are often blind. She claimed that the force generated from smacking the water during a dive (and the fact that ... [+]
There was a man on the doorstep, all leatherette shoes and easy iron trousers. When I say doorstep I mean the pavement between the threshold and the hazard lines of a busy junction.
His head, too
... [+]
We pull off at the side of the highway in Somewhere, Maine looking to sing to the snails. There's a deep shoulder of gravel here, so we assume it to be a parking lot. The sky and the water and the ... [+]
The stoplight on the corner had been broken for weeks. Westway Avenue was yellow and green at the same time, while Cherry Lane was forever red. Mabel knew this. Mom and Dad called it "the ... [+]
It's a sunny Sunday afternoon —celebratory day: the sun hadn't visited your city's sky in ages— and you're out in the flea market. Browsing the offerings among the throng of people: old things ... [+]
I was chasing my little brother through the park at dusk. The whole park was filled with restless families waiting for the fireworks to start. My brother halted in his grass-stained diaper. "God ... [+]
It was a wonder the neighbors didn't complain. And I know it's irrational, maybe even paranoid, but I imagined the old guy upstairs must have heard me crying lately and was mocking my ... [+]
The last time I saw my father he was wearing a toupee that looked like a year's worth of dryer lint, a worn-out Carolina t-shirt, the blue almost white now, green golfing shorts, and penny loafers ... [+]
When you are a competent old man who lives alone, you can eat what you want for breakfast. This morning I had noodles, or rather noodle soup, a favorite of mine for colder weather. Broth with ... [+]