The day my neighbor ordered me to tear down the retaining wall that had been holding an entire hillside in place for twenty years, I stood there with the letter […]
The Empty Chair The morning of the hearing I put on the charcoal dress I had owned for five years, the one I kept because Keith had long ago taken […]
The leather folder sat on my passenger seat like a trophy. I had just walked out of the notary’s office on Central Avenue, documents signed and sealed. Four hundred and […]
The air in my workshop was thick with the smell of freshly cut oak and something else. Desperation. It wasn’t mine. It was rolling off my family in waves. My […]
Margaret Ross’s voice didn’t so much travel across the boardroom as detonate in it. It cracked through the glass walls with a violence that had nothing to do with volume […]
Some Grandmothers Don’t Stay Quiet As told by Carol Martinez Ihave driven through the desert in all conditions over sixty-five years of living in Phoenix. I know what it looks […]
My birthday has always been less a celebration than a tax I pay for belonging to a family that never quite decided whether to love me or simply use me. […]
The View The short version is what I tell at bars when someone doesn’t believe me. They cut down my trees for a better view, so I shut down the […]
The glow from my laptop screen was the only light in the living room. I sat cross-legged on a cheap, scratchy rug I had bought at a thrift store eight […]
My name is Harold Brennan. I am sixty-eight years old, a retired forensic accountant living in the quiet suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, and I have spent most of my professional […]