Things We Think About When We Drown
My grandmother drowned twice, and both times she fought her way back up to the surface.
The first time, it was mid-summer, 1952. The whole of northern Minnesota was struck by a heat wave that wilted everything but the desire for water. Nowhere was hit harder than Abilene. […]

Identical Me
My mother became a doll maker in Tehuacán after my father died when I was less than a year old. Doll making helped my mother pass the time during her widow’s withdrawal from the world, and unwittingly, helped disclose a unique talent. This was 63 years ago before all the North Americans came down […]

Ed is Orb
The truth about mattresses? Generally speaking, the best times we have on them have more to do with our company than anything else. I’m in the business of selling furniture, not sex and so this is what I tell customers. Your spine should look the same lying down as it does standing up. […]

Juliet
I met her on a sweltering afternoon in Bombay, on the kind of day your feet boil within your shoes. I asked her if the bus had already gone by, and she told me the story of her life. As I watched her speak, I wondered what kind of person actually spills out her soul […]

He Said, She Said
His worst nightmare is that she’s still thinking about that guy from her college days, the one with the long hair who played the guitar, the one he’s sure she must have dated in the most vertical of relations. He wonders if she remembers his songs, if she could play them by […]

ISO
Daniel had kept the ad with him for weeks—at first figuratively. He chanted it like a mantra on the bus as he gripped the aluminum bar, pretending not to notice the BO of the blonde who was always on the 6, and who consumed enough coffee that it leaked from her pores. ISO […]