I thought it was a crab apple tree the first year we lived in our house. We let it spill its fruit onto the ground below. The following summer, it sprouted its little green spheres again and I watched ... [+]
I got Jo when I was 23 years old and living in Montana. She was no more than 10 inches and skinny as a twig. Before I adopted her, I wanted to get bitten so that I wouldn't be afraid of my own snake ... [+]
According to some people, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ has brought as a consequence the quick rise of technology. Initially, this assumption was considered because during the centuries previous ... [+]
When I was a kid, I would throw birthday parties for Martin Luther King Jr. I knew his birthday because it was a national holiday, a Monday for me to have a three-day weekend off from school. I joke ... [+]
I used to think drowning wouldn't be so bad. But the cold seeps into your bones and roots there. The waves will sleep with you still. Drowning... it creeps up on you. It slips into your city, past the ... [+]
into the garage, no more Buick or Honda, now driving his oldest grandchild and her babies between Wake Forest suburb and student seminary housing. No more museum of decapitated brooms, empty dusty ... [+]
In the midst of a village, South of Africa
When we all thought we have done our duty as mourners
Digging the grave, because there was no funeral plan
He died a sinner, from spiritual spell
...
[+]
"Personally, I think Voltaire looks like a propped-up flamingo... but a flamingo could probably write better."
A few quiet laughs trickled through the otherwise silent class.
The quip
...
[+]
Two minutes before it happened, Maya and I lay in the middle of the hallway while the other six students paced and drank from the water fountain. With our brains jittery after the multiple-choice ... [+]
Heart pounding wildly, he cavorted through the house, wreaking botanical havoc. Hearing an anguished cry as his assault on the houseplants was discovered, he tossed his head in spirited defiance ... [+]
You will meet a man who tells you we are all made of the stuff of stars. That our bodies hold the carbon and nitrogen and helium and oxygen atoms that formed the ancestors of stars we see today. He'll ... [+]
I bounce back and forth between how long it feels like since I was in high school. Like a century and one week at the same time. I could endlessly flip through the blurry stack of memories, many of ... [+]
You always hear people talking about their mom being their best friend or their mom doing this and that for them and being so excited to see them, but what about when that's not the case? What about ... [+]
Abuelo is dying.
He has been dying for a while, some odd quantity of months.
I have learned that like plants, humans can wither so quickly.
One day, we are so healthy our flowers are fully
...
[+]
Mom came to America, hungry for a slice of the American dream. Her first bite was a man from Texas, a recent divorcée who was sweet, with an aftertaste of debt. Still, America was the "shining City ... [+]
