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Original Sin

I knew well enough that, without drastic cause, mothers like mine do not entrust their adolescent sons to aunts like Louise. Surely, Mother would have kept me among her own people if there had been any.

When I Was Immortal

My mother wound a dish towel around her left wrist, pulled it tight, then unwound it. My father sat waiting for something, smiling slightly, looking across the kitchen table at me and my sister, Kim.

Sunbeams

It is not drawn on any map; true places never are.

Herman Melville

Family Reunions

A family graveyard, a redwood tree, a private language

Too Late

An absent mother, a misplaced lover, a selfish child

Corned Beef On Rye

When I was seven, my father used to complain that I ate like a dinosaur — the kind that stood on its hind legs and ripped off tree branches with its mouth. The louder he yelled at me, the more I used my spoon like a shovel, until he’d wrap his fingers around my wrist and squeeze so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

Yipper

I kept walking backwards. My shadow on the wall of the house was monstrously tall. I waved at it with both arms. The shadow’s arms were longer and wilder than mine.

Seeing The Elephant

The Forgotten Children

When I pushed away the cot and lifted the trapdoor, his eyes glinted for a moment like an animal’s in the beam of Mother’s flashlight. Biscuit crumbs clung to his mouth, and around his shoulders was the old blanket he’d secreted away. I reached down to help him up, but he shrank from me, his eyes filled with hatred.

Dinner

TV dinners, small yellow eggs, baked Alaska