Charlie is an orphan. The last known elephant disappeared from the world twenty years ago when she was eight. Loss of habitat, viral pandemic, human insatiability long since devoured the whale, the honeybee, the domestic chicken, but Charlie is especially conflicted […]
The ruff was ever my downfall.
July and warmer than I liked, crouched in the curling ferns at the side of the road. Mud pressed beneath me, but not even it was cool; it tugged at the knees of my trousers as with a warm mouth. Across the road under the emerald canopy […]
Father slept with his head beside Maya’s feet, his arm across her knees, the woolen of his thigh a second pillow for her. When she woke in the middle of the night, he was gone, leaving behind a bale of hay where his head had been, […]
Lotte Heine had old, bad knees.
They were knees that had known the bites of many hardships over sixty years of life: of bare brick hearths before simmering copper cauldrons; of uneven flagstones beside soapy sponge buckets; of unforgiving vegetable beds strewn with broken flints. […]
Six months ago, we were doing planks and pushups and eating perfect at every meal. Now me and Donny are lucky to make it around the block a couple times after dinner. That’s it for the day—and only on the weekdays, just so the dogs don’t get too hyper while we’re at work. […]
At the end of the song, a ghost is waiting. It ripples in the air. It is a hint of iridescent blue, so subtle it can scarcely be seen. If it makes any noise it’s not audible over the music. He is listening to the first verse, the one he wrote the first day he saw her. […]
