While I’m away, a story from the archives… To give a thing a name, a label, a handle; to rescue it from anonymity, to pluck it out of the Place of Namelessness, in short to identify it—well, that’s a way of bringing the said thing into being. — Iff to Haroun in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun …
In my earliest memory, I sit on my mother’s lap as she reads Mother Goose. Wait here, she says, sliding me onto the couch before standing. I’ll be right back. Sunset stripes the room with shadow monsters, the darkest one yawning in a corner. It swallows her whole. Feet, legs, body, crown. She is there …
(Warning, the following contains spoilers for Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.) If I hadn’t retired, I’d be hanging kites in my classroom and prepping my Kite Runner unit, which I taught to my seniors every spring. I don’t miss being a teacher, but I miss teaching, and I miss spending spring with Khaled Hosseini’s glorious book. …
Shortly after we moved, my daughter wrote to Santa Claus. She worried she’d be getting coal and whether Santa knew our new address. ‘I’ve been trying my hardest to be good,’ she explained, and thanked him for ‘what you are doing for me and other children.’ She was 11. She’s twenty-five now. Along with a …
Brother, she said. I fed you your bottle. Give me your soul in exchange. As if that matters. As if that changes anything. No. You never drank her poison. You spat, then smashed its vial beneath your boot. She should have followed your example. You tell me this as we leave its deep woods grave, …
Valentine’s Day is next month, but I want to tell you a love story. There’s a boy, yes. And a girl. And they are young, though they feel like adults. They have recently been separated but are now reunited, ablaze with certainty in themselves and their future together. When our story begins, they stand, improbably, …
In eighth grade, Leann’s California brother blank-check, birthday-gifted her a whole new wardrobe, accessories included. I tried not to hate her. Tried not to worry whether anyone saw my Thursday jeans were Allthedays’, my sweater winnowed from Glad bag cast-offs, my wrists braceleted with scabs. They healed up mostly clear, except just there. See? One …
Before Everyone discovered Someone’s bones, Someone stored their faces in a box in a drawer in the middle of their dresser and, mornings when they awoke, tried on each in turn, discarding each facsimile as smallish or loose or lacking in some necessary, elusive detail heard about but never seen (like unicorns or potted gold), …
Silenced. Wrote. Can’t shut up now. *****
A grizzled, gap-toothed man asks to break a twenty for his bill. I keep all m’fives, he tells the waitress. The man at the counter laughs. I like keeping all my money, too. Naw, the fives. He holds a bill aloft. The ones with E. When I was little and loud, my favorite word was, …
My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann 