Ghost Parachute

Ma has been gone for two years and twenty-eight days when Dad knocks on the bedroom door as if it’s still a question. “Ready for Johnny Cash?” he says. He’s there in my doorway, raw, tired, sad again. Belly wobbling like loose chicken skin, he flutters over, hot kisses branding my neck. Then he’s chirping […]

1. It had been raining red-winged blackbirds in Milltown, Ohio for three days. They thudded against Sean’s umbrella as he picked his way through the bodies on the sidewalk Monday morning, determined to go to the office as usual. He probably wouldn’t get much work done, none of them would, but it was better than […]

I can’t talk to my wife anymore. Not since she brought home that peacock. She told me she found him lost and bedraggled by a dumpster behind the Sav-A-Lot, discarded, like someone didn’t want him anymore and she couldn’t just leave him there, could she? and I said I didn’t see why not and that […]

Sam needed to take an emergency-level shit when he went to buy that gun. He had slept with Dianne, a co-worker, whose husband Jake was now apparently homicidal. Dianne had fled to her parents’ house in New Hampshire the day before. Sam hadn’t seen Jake, but then again Sam was avoiding work and home. He […]

A few low lamps mimic some kind of shrieking pluck of a moon. It pierces. Greenery outside is sharp, sways, but gives nothing of its pockmarked façade. Transient shapes crumble walls inside. A siren blackens the wind every few minutes, skimming off the past. Look for me among the surface of those who swallow days. […]

The sea air has wrought changes in the past year. Bright blue paint peels off the front door, a rotting window frame dangles. The sound of the surf remains. Jacob loved the sea. “Mommy, I’m going to walk on the water, to the other end.” He wiggled his six-year-old, pink-painted toenails into sand. I hugged […]