Rat-tat-tat
We heard Changes three times on the radio. First on the way to Salem. Again on the way to the grocery store on the way back from Salem. And then again on the way to pick up Becky and…
Once a man was sitting with his wife. They had roasted a chicken which they were about to eat together. Then the man saw that his aged father was approaching, and he hastily took the chicken and hid it in a cupboard, for he did not want to share. ...
You got something in the mail today, the man’s wife says. It looks like it’s from your uncle.
The man takes the package and holds it in his hands. He opens it.
Inside is a sword.
This sword was used…
Sometimes—while hiking stretches of the Appalachian Trail, while driving cross-country, while forging new relationships—I imagine myself an explorer discovering inhabited lands. I imagine myself surrounded by plants I have never seen, mountains I have never climbed, rivers I have never…
He is so deliciously close to me, I can smell the scent of his shampoo. Dark ends of his hair still clustered and damp. His skin is so invitingly smooth, it looks like he just shaved in a hot shower.…
When I was in my sixteenth year, a friend of my father’s, who worked for the state, came by my father’s store and had mentioned that the state psychiatric hospital in Waltham was looking for a piano player, a musician, to entertain their patients, one night a week, midweek. My father, of course, immediately thought of me. ...
She was my sign language teacher. It wasn’t until the end of the semester that I’d finally learned enough signs to ask her out. And even then I wasn’t sure if I’d asked her out on a DATE or on…
The rising sun shines thin and white across a small kitchen in Opole, Poland. Eli Sigmund, a ten-year-old boy sits at the breakfast table, waiting. His mother anxiously paces back and forth, frantically packing suitcases for Eli’s father and his…