My grandmother was still playing Euchre with her friends, even though the East Shore Senior Center had closed down months ago. Those seniors were sneaky about it—alternating houses, setting up games at odd hours so no one could detect a pattern, speaking in code over
Our flight was delayed. It would be more accurate to say your flight was delayed, and my flight was delayed, but we cannot know now what belonged to one of us and what belonged to the other. The most that we can know now is
The man bought three goldfish and a small fish tank at the wet market during his weekly grocery run. He happened to walk past the stall that sold ornamental fish, and stopped to take a look at one of the brightly glowing tanks. The man
When the love ends, one realizes that it is gracious for a lover not to speak in permanence or gifts. I’m sitting at a study table on the sixth floor of the library, and the window before me is something like twenty feet tall. The
The bandages circled my head at an oblique angle and irritated the earward side of my right eyebrow. I was waiting in the sickly park outside the hospital for Zalut (pronounced like “Salut!”) to arrive in his car, a duct-taped Vaz-2101. There was broken glass
By the time Ella Henderson snuck into her two hundred and fifty seventh free movie at the Greensboro AMC, she was almost hoping to get caught. The sneaking wasn’t done out of financial necessity — her paralegal salary was comfortable enough. It was a hobby,
JUST WAIT I know what the law says. Plus, the SSO makes me repeat it after her, every Tuesday afternoon, inside her office. “Let’s say you see your mom, Eva. What do you do now?” I say: “Push the alarm.” Every time, Ms. L gives
I decided to make a list of everything I knew about the Jonathans. The one in the cubicle to my left had glasses and a comb-over. The one in the house across the street was a bit younger, with smaller glasses and darker hair.
There was a hole in the wall. Dad built the place in ’56 and refused to explain it. Even though the gap seemed structurally unsound, I didn’t push the question. Mom placed a vase of sunflowers on the short ledge leaning back into the empty
My school bus was Lord of the Flies on wheels, and I was Piggy. Nighttime tears shed the residue of that day’s humiliations. My parents’ variegated forms of “Children are cruel” landed as corroboration rather than sympathy. Their concern quickly sewed into ennui hemmed with