Ghost Parachute

Think of yourself light-as-air, not weighed down with dread and foreboding. Calm your stilted heartbeat, stifle your frantic thoughts of running away. There is nowhere to run. There is forest all around. Wolves. Bear. His hunting dogs and prancing horses. Think of what this means for your family. Think of yourself as a vessel for […]

The yawning cuffs of our wide-leg, low-rise jeans suck up water from the mound of uncleared snow smothering the sidewalk outside the dive bar.  We huddle together, each of us clad in skimpy crop tops or flimsy tanks, our half-naked limbs offering meager warmth against the frigid February night. We shudder and shrink, a meek […]

I was born under a waning crescent moon, got the gift of getting a quick read on people. Maybe that’s why, despite your name ringing no bells, and the lack of details you provided about the nature of your business, I agreed to meet you, anyway. But only in this place. Familiar ground, all else […]

The end of the school year party is next week, and Sharon decides to create a crown made from number two pencils. Each has to be measured carefully to match. For the last week she works on them, sharpening and measuring, then measuring and sharpening again for several hours after she comes home from work. […]

Aisha and I were driving to New Orleans. Somewhere before Picayune and 4am, we pulled off I-59, found a wooded residential road which led to the Hide-A-Way Lake Club, parked, and stared at the water. We opened the hatch, put down the back seats, made a little nest with sweaters and sleeping bags. August and […]

Every August, we climbed into a bus for the four-hour drive to Lake Geneva for Innovation Industries’ annual retreat. Our enjoyment of the great outdoors was restricted to scheduled events and fantasies of drowning my more bothersome coworkers. Every workplace seemed to have some version of Nosey Nelly, Chatty Chuck, Backstabbing Brenda, and Freaky Fred. […]