Ghost Parachute

I thought we would be Alligators plural. But you have taken a green sheet and some cardboard and stapled it together into a single costume and sharpied scales on it. It could be worse, like if your favorite team were the Heat or the Porcupines. If this is your vision for the best couple’s costume, […]

Mom, do you remember the photo from our only family trip to the beach? The one Dad took of you? The one where you look untamed? Maybe even free? Whole? Do you remember the day the photo was taken? The wind tickling our skin? The birds singing overhead? The soft rain washing all of our […]

I’m on a plane to nowhere, the flight attendant an agitated wasp saying over and over, “Sir, that is not allowed on this aircraft.” She’s speaking in such a manner because my pants and underwear are pulled down around my ankles. “Sir, that is not allowed on this aircraft,” she repeats, her face worn like […]

She didn’t know what it meant to fall apart, to come apart, to completely unravel until she pulled at a scab and kept pulling, like a thread, and lost a layer of dermis. It was painless, the damage negligible. But then her ex died, unexpected, and before she knew it, her hair came loose, little […]

Kasey slammed her blue three-speed into the rack, locked it, and, ran across the main lawn, yanking the red elastic bands off the ends of her braids as she dashed through the wet grass. Freshly mown blades stuck to her sandal straps and clung to her toes. She’d waited all weekend to see Jack, but […]

The year I turned ten, not long after Momma died, Daddy made me and my sister Sissy hike through Thorny Locust Woods on Halloween night instead of taking us trick-or-treating. Daddy said no kids of his would ever beg anyone for anything. He said it was better to learn how to walk through a world […]