Last month, my son came to visit and was home for all of an hour when he received a devastating phone call, news that would send him into the kind of hysterics I’ve never witnessed. He was half shrieking, half screaming. He was punching walls. Hyperventilating. Pacing in broken circles. Mashing fists into his face. […]
Words From The Other Side
On Pink Fluff and Other Notable Traditions
I’ve spent plenty of holidays alone. One of my best holiday memories is the year I was first truly independent and on my own, riding my horse with a foot of snow already on the ground and more of it coming in giant, floury flakes, on a quiet Christmas morning. It was like being inside […]
Pushcart Prize Nominations
This year’s nominees: The River at Dawn by Evan James Sheldon Those Who Grow Horns by Miranda Williams Beehive by Karen Gonzalez-Videla July, 1944 by Shaemus Spencer Two Moons and a Hummingbird by Jo Varnish Hester’s Mom by MFC Feeley
The Thing About Loneliness
Loneliness is a trick your mind plays on you. It’s crafty and insidious, and it doesn’t like to lose. Loneliness is also a little bit scary. It’s actually a truth, not trickery at all. It both corrodes and guts you when you’re most empty. It laughs while deflating you, even when you had no air […]
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Ah, Halloween, my favorite holiday. It comes in autumn, a season meant for melancholy, for pensiveness, a time of year when you can believe the veil between the worlds is thin. The nights are cold in most of this country in October, with clear skies sprinkled with so many stars, you’ve never noticed before how […]
The Thing About Books
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how […]
