Domestic Violence

Separation

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

There is a dead snake on the cracked road. My son says it’s not a dead snake. He says the snake has just shed its skin and left it there.

A Conversation with My Father

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

You could make things up that actually felt more like truth, somehow. You could build a world so precise that other people started to believe it, too. And if you didn’t believe the things my dad said, he’d find a way to make you.

The Night I Don't Remember

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

It doesn’t matter how many AA meetings you go to. As long as you are taking oxycodone and oxymorphone, you’re going to be high, and, as long as you have complex regional pain syndrome, you’re going to be taking something serious for the pain.

Unruly

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

I’m rebellious, defiant, so I’m sent to the barn, driven there by my newly single mom, or my newly single dad, or my grandparents, or someone else. Another parent told my mom I should try horseback riding. Ice-skating and tae kwon do and ceramics didn’t stick, but I can already tell I’m a horse girl.

Waterfall

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Sex, to me, was like a solvent, cutting through layers of everyday grime. Without it, irritations accumulated with no way of wiping the slate clean; disappointment coagulated into distress. I felt forlorn, restless, and disconnected. Yet no matter how many times I sounded the alarm, my husband never seemed to hear me.

Shimmer

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 12:00:00 -0400

We don’t have all the facts—the social worker closed her eyes, her head dipping almost imperceptibly—but she did tell us that before he was moved into the foster system, at night, after his biological mother had passed out, this one impossibly small boy would tuck his younger siblings into bed and, in case his father somehow found his way home, sit in a kitchen chair across from the front door, an old air rifle pumped and butted up against the slender wing of his shoulder.

The Tap Out

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I want to say that when Gavin told me he would kill me, I did not believe him, though there was nothing to suggest he was bluffing: He held me down in bed, his hand on my throat, knees locked around my waist, the alcohol-induced sheen to his blue eyes suggesting he could commit to his words without much thought. But the fear I should have felt—that I had felt minutes before, when I was running around, trying to escape him—was gone. I was gone. I had retreated into what the two of us referred to as my “shutdown mode.”

Glory of the Seas

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A couple of years ago I moved into a retirement village and had to do some serious downsizing. My shell collection went from five shelves to two, not counting the larger shells on lone display and the dozen or so whelks scattered about.

I’ve kept a few rare and uncommon shells: the junonia, the paper nautilus, the carrier shell. I’ve also kept the ones Mother sent me from her own collection. The bleeding tooth. Shells and rocks friends brought me from their vacations. Fossils I picked up on the beach. The purple cockle half Bobby—now Bob—and I found fifty years ago. (He has the other half.) The small, ocean-battered Triton we found during his first visit to Oregon. Various turkey wings, tulips, and spirulas. The fossilized whelk.

My life story on two shelves.

And These Too Are Defensive Wounds

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400

I’d thought the transcripts would help me write a letter to the parole board, but when I opened them, I saw a section of my own testimony at Maynard’s trial, and that was that. My head filled with hissing static; my heart raced.

Fire

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -0400

A chair flies through your window and someone’s screaming for you to come out and you’re fourteen and he’s twenty and there’s nowhere to go and no cops coming and no one to make this any better, and you become a flame that can’t be extinguished.

Poems I Won’t Write

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 04:00:00 -0400

The one where you blow your head off with the gun, the gun / I searched for, the gun you fired over the phone while you / stayed silent to make me think you’d finally done it.

Past Lives

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

I know now this is the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship: right before the woman leaves. It’s when some women get murdered. I was lucky.

My Father Got Beat

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 04:10:00 -0400

My father got beat / but he never beat me. / His skinny frame would tighten up, / he’d start to shake with a seething rage / at my errors, my arrogance, / he’d clench his bony fingers and say / “I’ll sock ya” but he never did.

September 2020

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

Featuring George Gerbner, Stephanie Coontz, Ani DiFranco, and more.

The Most Dangerous Place

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

Another woman’s husband got a rattlesnake and kept it in a cage at home. He would threaten to put it in the bed or the shower with her. That kind of emotional torture needs no physical violence.

Train Songs

Sat, 01 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500

The breakfast rush was hitting its peak when we learned about the dead woman lying not far from Table Four.

Dark Houses

heatherellesellers@gmail.com — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Gingerly, creeping, my mother drives her “safe” back way home, winding through the subdivisions bordering downtown Orlando, Florida. The little truck doesn’t have air conditioning. I stretch my arm out the window as if I might be able to feel the Spanish moss hanging from the trees like witch hair.

Breaking The Law

Mon, 01 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

An illegal abortion, a brother’s drug habit, Cold War secrets

To Have And To Hold

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 16:41:00 -0400

One quality that helps a marriage work is when partners respect each other and are each grateful for what the other brings to the relationship. Relationships run on an economy of gratitude. And if your partner needs to change his or her behavior, it’s important to ask for that change without attributing bad motives to the behavior. When you do argue, or when your partner gets angry, look for the soft emotion under the hard one and talk to that. A belief in the goodwill of the other person is critical.

Unlocked

heatherellesellers@gmail.com — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400

My mother regularly told me, Heather, if you are ever in danger and I’m not there, make your way to a house with flowers. The flowers show they care and are kind and will help.

It didn’t occur to me until years later that we had not a single bloom in our yard.

Criminal Injustice

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Prison deepened my sister’s addiction, crushed her self-esteem, narrowed her options for jobs and education, and diminished her hope for a good life. She was in a much worse situation each time she came out.

Danger

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

On the subway, in a mine, at a gas station

How To Hit Your Dad

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

It never occurred to me when I was little that there was a world in which dads did not come home from the bar and beat up their oldest sons. It was totally normal, you know what I mean?

We Should Do Something

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0400

There’s a news story from yesterday — December 21, 2006 — about an Idaho man who pleaded guilty to the beheading of his wife. He was caught because he got into a traffic accident that killed two other people, and his wife’s lifeless head bounced out of his pickup truck and onto the road.

Speaking Up

Thu, 01 May 2014 00:00:00 -0400

A volleyball game, a missed brunch, a game of Candy Land

Blueberries

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Basia watches her granddaughter, Lalka. No matter what else she does — digs in the garden, pulls weeds in the greenhouse, peels the potatoes — always she watches her granddaughter, who has a reddish-purple birthmark over her neck and jaw and part of her cheek. Her husband, Zbigniew, watches Lalka too.

Eyes

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Organ donation, birdcalls, lasagna

Little Bird, Little Bird

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

There are four types of brick. I remember two of them: pavior and stock. Our row house was all brick with ledges near the roof, four stories up. Pigeons liked to make nests there, but it was stupid; the ledges were too shallow, and with the first strong gust of wind their nests blew down. Still, year after year, they did it. Optimists, those pigeons.

Baby Lollipops

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0400

It was the year they found a dead toddler in the bushes, head bashed in, bite marks and cigarette burns all over his body. He was wearing a T-shirt with multicolored lollipops across the front. It was November 1990.

Fights

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Water balloons, an underground fort, the letter c