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Siblings
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Of The Four Of Us
I’m the one who was so desperate for a dog that I sat on the wood floor of our living room, hour after hour, week after week, and memorized the dog section of the encyclopedia.
February 2022
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Count
I counted because I had told myself that if the count was right, my mother would be spared. My father would not die. My older sister, Jeanne, would make it to high school. But only if I kept the count.
February 2022
Poetry
Intensive Outpatient
On our way back from a Mother’s Day celebration in Newport Beach / my sister turned to me & said, Have you ever thought about treatment for your / eating disorder? For years the only eating disorder in the house was hers.
October 2021Readers Write
Sisters
The kind you’re born with, the kind you choose, the kind that teach Catholic school
October 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Earth Perfected
But then I accidentally bite into one of the sour, acrid parts of quarantine. It’s easy to forget, when you live four hundred miles away, that your mother’s temper can be sparked by something as benign as family movie night or a run-in with the Hertz rental-car dealership.
August 2021Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
My Brother’s Dinner With The President Of Sears
After this friend left, I excused myself to go to the bathroom, where I shut the door and fell to my knees, shaking and crying. I wished that my brother had been different. And I wished that I had been more forgiving and compassionate. I wished that everything between us had been different. I was on that floor for a while.
August 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Precarious
“Imagine if we’d known,” I said. “If you’d had a diagnosis, you could have been given lithium or something to help you.” Joan lifted her hands to her face and sobbed.
March 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Sonny Boy Williamson
In a clearing in the woods alongside a country lane outside the town of Tutwiler in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, stands Sonny Boy Williamson’s granite grave marker. As we approach, we notice more of the glints beneath us, and notice the same silver glints piled atop the old monument.
January 2021
Fiction
The Second-Toughest Son Of A Bitch In East Gary, Indiana
He would have said, sometimes it’s not about the truth. Sometimes it’s about kindness. Especially when it comes to family.
April 2020
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