The Keys by Her Plate Part One: Nineteen Years My name is Mark Lindgren. I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’ve been farming the same six hundred acres in O’Brien County, […]
The Bills by the Sugar Bowl My stepmother told me at her kitchen table in April. The bills were stacked by the sugar bowl. A neat pile, squared at the […]
The Porch on Third Street Part One: 3:40 The school bus squeals to a stop at the corner of Third Street every afternoon at 3:40. I can hear it coming […]
Eleven days after I closed on my new house, I was four hours away when my security system sent me a notification. Person detected in driveway. It was 10:14 on […]
The first thing I noticed was that my wife wasn’t crying. That frightened me more than if she’d slapped me across the face. It was 10:47 on a Friday night […]
The Empty Chairs I woke up from heart surgery alone. The first thing I saw was the ceiling. White tiles with little holes in them. The second thing I saw […]
The Swallow Pendant Part One: The Courtyard My name is Zofia Lewin Berman. Everyone has called me Zoe since I came to America, but that was not the name my […]
“Hey, bro. My bad. Totally forgot.” That was my brother’s explanation after I’d spent five hours sitting on a metal bench outside the Columbus airport. I held the phone against […]
“Grandma’s here, baby!” My mother stood at the wooden gate to my backyard, holding a teddy bear almost as big as a refrigerator. She wore a blue blouse and white […]
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” My father’s voice cut across the vineyard lawn like a car alarm. Every conversation within thirty feet stopped. The string quartet broke off […]