Grief

Because I became allergic to chocolate when I was seventeen

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

because a rash spread on my chest when I ate mole sauce at Sanborns; because acne populated my face every time I drank hot cocoa; because I believed it to be easy to give up something I loved

Our Fraying Hearts

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

Boxer’s Fracture

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

My mother once put her fist / through drywall, nothing fractured // but that already-broken home, / a little more of her spirit and ours.

My Bowstring Heart

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

On the field I was all animal instinct and brute force—a bruiser, a bone breaker. Every tackle was a rebuke against a life where fathers die. When I played rugby, I wasn’t a broke, lost little girl. I wasn’t a struggling amateur writer. I had goals. I was a winner. I was MVP. I was someone.

Bars

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

On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

The Coast of Nowhere II

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

Sleet and black rain / pelting the eaves, the kind of predawn / that reaches through the window, hissing, / Your heart never was a bird let alone / a bright-red singing one.

Nicknames

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

Get to know Boxcar Betty, Stick Dick, Lali, and the Cajun Asian

I Got You

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

“I’m your brother,” the man says, then swallows. He is tall and burly with deep-set blue eyes and thinning hair. He wipes his nose on his flannel sleeve and forks some coleslaw from a plastic container.

The Dead of Dream Town

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

As the majority population of Dream Town, the dead hold all elective offices. They determine the hours of the municipal pool. (Midnight swimming!) They program traffic lights to operate on peculiar patterns: Some never turn red. Others never turn green.

The Eulogy I Didn’t Give (V)

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

Are you writing his eulogy in advance? Are you afraid / to sleep at night? Afraid your bones are planning / their escape? And what do you mean by love?

Stirring the Pot

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

Leading a strike, starting trouble between sisters, feeding strangers

Love in All Directions

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

Sometimes you had to conjure your own joy. Scratch that. Most of the time you had to conjure your own joy. So you had better suck it up and start chopping onions.

Pinkie Masters

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0500

A good scare can cure anything, she says. / We nod, and I thank her but insist / on holding my breath all night.

Wild Animals

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Swimming with whale sharks, hearing a mountain lion, refusing to eat a snake

Her Mother's Suitcase

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

That night she dreamed about her mother and the darkening spot on her ceiling and the water collecting in a fetid puddle in the middle of her living room carpet.

The Lonesomest Sound in the World

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

When the kids came to school, we tortured them because they smelled and wore the same clothes every day, until they just shut down, not even looking at us after a while, never raising their hands, never saying a word.

Silent Disco

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

“We’re here to have fun,” she says. “Be the full expression of yourselves! You can go anywhere or stay right here—wherever the music moves you.”

About That Time I Pushed a Car Uphill

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I want to pause here and point out the obvious: According to the laws of physics, as soon as Darius put the car in neutral, it would begin to roll back. With me behind it.

The Cat Who Woke Me Up

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

Moon Boots

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Our baby could not yet hold his head up. I lay on my parents’ living room floor next to my son, wondering how I was going to afford and overcome everything by myself, thinking I was too clumsy to take care of something as delicate as a child. And, in having these thoughts, I came undone.

Start with Overripe Bananas

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

You have to start with overripe bananas. Really overripe—not yellow with a couple of streaks but two thin-skinned ones that can hardly contain their own soft flesh. You should be able to smell banana from across your kitchen.

The Seafood Stand

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Once, my father drove from New Jersey to California by siphoning gas from strangers’ cars, then sent his van off the Pacific Coast Highway by laying a brick on the accelerator. His mother almost died when she heard.

Brother, Electric

cow2pie@aol.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

He grabs my hand, and static electricity snaps between us, as though he is coursing with energy. He blows his hot breath on my frozen fingertips and tells me it’ll be OK.

Zuma

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400

When you get to your father's bedroom, you see Dad shaking like a freshly fumigated bug. Your brother is by his side on the phone, his face red and sweaty, like when he's been skateboarding all day.

Thievery

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I was sure I'd heard our front gate squeal and rattle. We live on a tree-lined Chicago street where 6 AM on Sunday is the time for arriving home from the night shift or heading out to the early shift or, in the case of a very few early risers, walking a dog.

Ditch

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500

This is the part of the story where someone tells me, You couldn’t save him. He had to save himself. Every time I hear something like that, I want to scream.

Tart

jill.marie.k@gmail.com — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500

After the massage I take myself to lunch. I eat a passion fruit tart. It’s delicious—sour and sweet both in perfect balance. Its perfection makes me angry. The filling is bright yellow. I watch my fork pick up the yellow and the crumbs. I am too focused on this tart. I wonder if I have been worrying so much that the worry muscles in my brain are now broken, permanently sharpened to a point of attention that is useless now, an ambulance siren for no one.

Nectar

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500

It was an old tradition he had once told her about: When there was a death in the household, the beekeeper would go out to tell the bees about it. The thought was that, if the bees were not told, they would abscond. They were members of the family. Their feelings would be hurt if they were overlooked.

So he was doing it. Telling them. Romantic fool.

The Only Alternative

rcurriejr@gmail.com — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I’ve taken to telling young people that it takes ten years to get from age twenty to age twenty-five, five years to get from twenty-five to thirty, and three years, tops, to get from thirty to forty. So far, forty to fifty doesn’t seem like it’ll amount to much more than a long weekend. The people my age and older laugh knowingly, and the youngsters nod like Sure, sure, whatever you say, Gramps, and I am left, every time, wondering why the only thing we know to do with the stuff that terrifies us is to make jokes about it that aren’t really jokes at all.

Staying Tender

michelle.egan.dubarry@gmail.com — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Listening to parents who are newly grieving, I notice the places where their voices break. It is not when they describe the concrete details of suffering and lifeless bodies; it is in the emptiness that follows.