A long time ago, this girl had dreams. She had chocolate-covered, confetti sparkling dreams. The world was wide open, wide like the grins she wore between two long, brown pigtails.…
Someone placed it there. A neon green wooden chair parked in the middle of the city sidewalk on an ordinary Wednesday. Men and women in business suits and those casually…
It’s always such a tiny box, thrown in at the last minute. You hardly pay attention to it and never read its infinite wording. Because it never matters. Nothing…
The weekend came to a close. Excitement dimmed as she rose higher into the evening sky, and her heart sank like the setting sun outside the tiny airplane window. Her…
The chairs were set out. Exactly 100 rows. 20 of the same chairs on either side, each an exact copy of the one next to it. Soon the speaker’s voice…
The skies poured buckets of rain down on the town. The clouds and air and ground were one continuous gray sheet. The streets flooded until the cobblestones disappeared beneath puddles…
Every Tuesday afternoon. Right after school she dashed home and crammed a week’s worth of practice into thirty minutes. She liked the piano. She really wanted to learn it, but…
The tiny boat slowly passed into the light of the setting sun. Who was in it? Where was he or she going? I wondered if it was a fisherman or…
The packed SUV sped down the road. It was midday. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day. She should have been zooming toward him. Instead, she watched each matchstick tree pass, becoming…
They were in such a rush. The baby was crying, the little boy lost his shoe, and the mashed potatoes were getting cold. The husband grabbed all the presents…
The gust of wind kicked up and dropped the brittle brown leaf on the wooden table directly in front of me. Its edges curled up as if to smile. It…
He brought the flowers every year. The year she undercooked the turkey. The year her novel was published. The year the bathroom flooded. The year her father was no longer…
Life is a road. It’s straight sometimes, but then it curves. It might straighten out again or it might curve some more. But eventually a left will turn into a…
One day I saw her. She rode up on her bicycle, long blond hair floating behind her in the wind. She stepped off and took a bunch of yellow and…
The letterbox had always been there. In the middle of the field. It seemed awfully strange, it being here without a house or a driveway. But maybe not stranger than…
It’s been fourteen weeks and five days. That’s 2,472 hours since she last put on her running shoes. 103 days of frustration. After all this rest, her hamstring should have…
The birthday boy turned 2. He went to the park, he was blessed at church, he received presents, he ate cake, and he played. The shelter begrudgingly let me adopt…
She strutted down Main Street like a Parisian model. Her designer dress wasn’t purple; it was aubergine. Her shoes weren’t high heels; they were Manolo Blahniks. Jaws dropped as she…
Her father loved his plants. He mostly grew roses, but when retirement forced him out of his home–the one with the yard for all his rose bushes–he turned to geraniums.…
When she looks at the buildings that stretch into the sky, she wonders. She wonders if her life would be better if she worked in one of those tiny windows.…