Sybil Smith

A Boy Named Candy

Growing up, my siblings and I were aware of the enormous volume of water contained there. We knew that if the dam broke, our house would be swept away. It was tangible evidence of something we already felt: that we were never really safe.

God In The Smoke Room

There is a remnant of cool left to him. It’s in the way he combs his gray hair back with a little wave at the top. It’s in his gold neck-chains and the way he lights his Camel straights: one-handed, with an ornate Zippo lighter.

God Is Not Dead, He’s Busy Making Sure Nicole Kidman Wins Another Oscar

I was walking on the ice. Let me say up front that I am not a foolish woman, that the ice was thick and I was dressed warmly. Let me add that, though I do drink too much on occasion, I wasn’t drinking that morning. I’d just had one teeny-tiny hit of good pot. That was all.

Sparrows In Purity Supreme

Sometimes when I’m sad, I become convinced that the world is going to end. And it will end someday, of course, but scientists give it billions of years yet. My “sense of impending doom” (the phrase psychiatrists use to describe this type of fear) is all out of proportion to what I know to be true.

Bible Hockey

Jail seems like a metaphor for the human condition: we all have life without the possibility of parole. And, as in life, some people serve their sentences in nicer places than others. Foxtrot — or “the hole,” as the inmates call it — is the worst place to be. It is like the underworld, a frightening and remote region where everything is cement or metal.

Do You Know Calvin Jones?

I had seen Calvin beaten, scorned, humiliated by our father. I had been spared; Katie had been spared; Tema had been spared — all because of Calvin. He was the better target, the only son, born with one testicle, his head misshapen by the doctor’s forceps. He’d been our shield. In our daily reconnaissance, he was point.

Jean Jones

And Jean was off and rolling. It had taken less than fifty words, spoken with a modicum of interest, to snag her. Like some massive, ornamental carp, she nosed up out of the dark bottom, toward the light.

Jonsared

He doesn’t seem crazy. Not at all. There’s no muttering, no matted hair, no tics, no eyes that are keyholes into rooms where the worst things happen.

On The Suffering Of Little Things

Everyday tasks become difficult when one constantly worries about the suffering of little things. There are times when I can’t mow the lawn because there are too many grasshoppers dancing about.

Walking On Eggshells