For a few months I went out with a lawyer who used to be obsessed with his body and its shape during college. To stock up on requisite fat macros and vitamin C when in a rush, he’d crush up peaches in olive oil and drink it all down. When his grandmother caught sight of…

Spore (noun). A usually one-celled reproductive body that can grow into a new organism without uniting with another cell. The man who abducted Claire’s daughter entered the room via a doorway in the air. Though Claire only had a moment to register what was happening—they’d been mid-argument about some frilly dress her daughter had downright…

Molly begins not with a plan but an unrecognizable inkling. She loves to read. Everything. Mostly, she reads what is around the house from Reader’s Digest to John Jakes to Little Women.  And Molly loves English class. But, she thinks, everybody—every girl—loves English.  But not everybody—not every girl—is good at the harder subjects like math…

That morning near Temple, Texas at a fallen-down saloon my cowgirl shirt fit me like a glove. Three buttons undone and tighter than my jeans. Looked down at my baby blue cowgirl boots and rucksack with my green army jacket inside, change of clothes and Mimi, my tiny pearl handled pistol used once. Shot a…

The dog blames me, refuses to poop for five days. The sixth day, he betrays himself and does his business on Joan Sellers’s lawn. Joan stands on my front porch. She’s holding a bag of dog excrement. “Is this yours?”  “Sorry, Joan. I’m out of bags.”  “The HOA has rules. My granddaughter almost stepped in…

Iris had done well for herself and so wanted to invest in some land: something reliable and permanent, a sound investment. She’d saved for eighteen years; she cashed out her 401k. After months of site visits, she had found the most charming plot of land in the city. She was sure of it. Unlike her…

The Earth dipped beneath the crater and it was all so beautiful that we thought for a moment we were going to be okay.  We lay on our backs in the crater, embroidered moons stitched over our hearts, still wearing our school uniforms because we never made it home.  “Do you think someone will find…

Flotsam No survivors. A boat sunk in the middle of the ocean still makes a sound. Of submarines lost during World War II, many were never found. Their exact locations unknown, the mapping imprecise, the currents of the ocean bearing away the traces. Some were found decades later, young children of men who had died…

I I was standing outside the Mall of New Hampshire, waiting for the 8 bus, when this wiry little woman with sunken eyes and brown teeth asked to bum a cigarette. She was dragging a comically large duffle bag behind her, and she moved her body in small, erratic bursts. I flipped open my pack…

As my performance reviews indicate, I exceed proficiency in hygiene, punctuality, theoretical modeling, and inconspicuous ambiance. My problem is physics: Newton, the apple, light bending through prisms into rainbows and whatnot. And vibration.

Our neighbors have picked up a firework habit. It’s emotional regulation, they say. Never mind the burn bans and drought, the sleeping children and anxious dogs, the calls to the police and the subsequent fines. Their son aces a spelling test? Roman candles. Their daughter goes on her first date? Sparklers.  Their father loses his…

Starting soon after her mother’s death, five flashes of light began to shine through her bedroom window, every morning at five a.m.  The first time it happened, she was in a reoccurring dream in which she walked through a dark forest, arms swinging, body so weightless she sometimes floated.  In her dream the night sky…