Fiction

Devin walks his Chow Chow, Milly, among the half-dozen spruces. Mom went to the bathroom in the looming lodge, all windows and wooden pillars and green paneling. Milly squats low to poop, legs quivering, and Dev glances around because he doesn’t have a bag to pick it up. He sees a man standing at the …

When I hear you smile, I apologize for everything. The rain, my dollar store umbrella, the eight hours of airport salads and your dead phone battery, whatever high pressure system pushed this all your way the first weekend you’re back in town. You didn’t come all the way out to the west coast, the first …

I met Stan on his hands and knees, croaking to a Sonoran Desert toad that had escaped its enclosure. SDT-4, a wily and tenacious explorer according to Stan’s notes, was wedged in the space between the lab oven and the wall. Later, when I dried out SDT-4’s skin in the same oven, I concluded that …

Elizabeth is my father’s mother’s daughter and was my best friend growing up. Born two weeks apart, we were raised as sisters, though she was technically my aunt. We grew up knowing she held this ranking. She sometimes used it to get what she wanted. I’m your aunt, she’d say, so you have to share …

It’s nothing more than a quick glimmer on the asphalt, weak morning sun grazing dull metal. A minor miracle in the parking lot at Saint Ursula as an old man’s filmy gaze catches a wink of light. He stops, and for one more step, the woman next to him keeps walking. He sets a hand …

1 I had just closed the window curtains when Keith arrived. The end of the workweek brought a relentless spell of exhaustion and with it the unwillingness to cook. I had a container in the microwave of leftovers from the night before.  He followed me to the kitchen, and I felt his eyes as I …

When Kyle turns off the vacuum cleaner, silence rushes down the second floor hallway of her home and closes around her like an angry mob. She stands there in a pair of Mom-cutoff denim shorts, loose blue tank-top, and crocs, with her black hair spilling free from the back and edges of a blue bandanna. …

“Xetery!” Joyce shrieked, hurling Great Grub magazine the length of her spacious kitchen. The cover shot of her own airbrushed face sailed over the breakfast bar and her husband Roger then hit the wall and crumpled onto the spotless floor. Roger looked up from his croissant. “What the…?” “Xetery!” Joyce barked and stormed out. “Xetery?” …

My friend is picking meat from a bone when she says her marriage has become bland. Calling it a bone doesn’t paint a clear picture. Could be the leg of a deer? A horse? I ask if she wants the number for my therapist. My feelings are what they are, she says. They’re not going …

Carrie didn’t have any kind of visa to stay in the country. Her tourist visa had run out six months prior and she’d ended up working for cash at her friend Marianne’s holistic bookstore. That was where she met Bruce. Twice a week he came in to do healing sessions in the back room and …