When she returned to Dauphine Street after the funeral, she removed the draperies from every window of their monstrous house before she removed even her patent-leather heels, which made ascending and descending the stepladder difficult, even foolish. But she wanted no gossip. Let the whole Marigny regard her life through the clean glass. Let all…

After four months without a phone call or letter, our Uncle returned to Portland on Christmas Eve with a cocktail waitress he had covered head to toe in fresh mud. He’d done the same to himself except he’d added a humble sash of maple leaves and was also wearing a helmet made of twigs, and…

Whatever you want.2 Whatever you want is what I want.3 Whatever you want is what I want and I want whatever you want.4 Whatever you want is what I want and I want whatever you want because you want it.5 I only want what you want.6 I don’t want.7 I only want what you want,…

The plan (unspoken but mutual) had been to break up after the movie. It’s over, but let’s spend an evening mourning it, externalizing its collapse onto flickering lights in a dark theater. For me, the simultaneous closeness and distance — sharing an armrest and a bag of popcorn, yet silent and facing forward, no more…

On their third date, beholding the object itself, Mellie said to Brooke, “Your clit is a perfect purple turtle.” “Don’t,” Brooke said, and stirred away. Later, when Mellie had claimed a spot in the nook under Brooke’s arm, the reason: “My ex is a turtle.” What’s more, Brooke’s ex still lived with her. “His name’s…

Before our men all left in ’42, there he’d been. Our windows pointed at their driveway. His cigarettes pulled my chin like a fish hook — sleek, not painless. I’d see the couple next door necking by their truck and leer from our living room, dust clean blinds as an excuse to watch. Sometimes I…

Aunt Pam sent lavender hand cream as a gift. Its glass bottle was thick and would have been expensive to ship, so she emptied the lotion directly into a padded mailing envelope. She believed her method was sensible; bubble wrap was waterproof, and the edges were easily sealed by tape. She kept saying, “What’s the…

I lived without a mother for most of my life. She was in Montreal, hiding from us, hysterical, as they once said. The way I remembered her was through the photo albums we stowed in our attic bedroom, covers grayed by the dust that fell from the rafters. Because my older brother and I would…

Eziamaka looked outside her window. The drizzle of the rain had stopped now. It was evening, the sun had finally come out of the dark clouds and cast a reddish hue on the wet buildings. Eziamaka walked back into her room and grabbed her camera. After clicking, she walked to the kitchen and put a…

These are things my father’s hands touched: lighter, wrench, knife, kittens, a brick. My father did it. Submerged the kittens in the black river. Did he do it with his bare hands? Did he feel their pulses dwindle? I got to keep the mother, she was our rat cat. I used to glimpse her crushing…

She slept all summer and only woke up when it snowed. We’d all spot the first flakes of the season drifting down outside our windows and think to ourselves, Oh good, it’s been so long since we’ve seen Mabel! She wore a velvety black jacket made from the skin of something. Lewis thought it was…

It was the birds first. We woke to find them dotting our yards one morning at the end of winter, wings limp, dead, like phantom lawn ornaments strewn across the grass. A disease, we figured, rubbing the sleep from our eyes. Something biological; chemical, maybe. There were refineries everywhere; nuclear plants never quite far enough…