Ohio
1. Go into bathroom 2. Lights on 3. Shut door 4. Lock door 5. Tie back hair 6. Take off glasses, if wearing 7. Take off shirt 8. Take off rings on right...
Straight Up
We’ll never sit down and talk. Chances are that the trajectory of our lives will push our paths further apart, not cause them to intersect. You will never...
Nature Nurture
On the red brick walkway outside our front door, I look up and see that the mist, so ethereal an hour ago, is rapidly vanishing. The sun, a bright white...
The North Side
When I was fifteen, my father re-enlisted in a war I didn’t know he had been fighting. He wanted to move back to the north side, he said. Back to the...
Birthday Trip to Père La Chaise
It’s February and we’re standing beneath a gray, birdless sky. Arm in arm eating mangosteens purchased from a wrinkled old man in a woolen hat and...
Cracked
Overnight, something happens between the two hemispheres of my brain: a tiff, a quarrel, an all-out brawl. The universe unravels in my hands; its spiral...
Rearview Mirror
Crossing the neutral ground through the tunnel, or one of the bridges, is like holding one's breath. Time seems to stop. Space does not exist. The matter of...
My Father at the Mountainside
A whole Saturday I walked back and forth across our slick garage floor to hear those magnificent heels clop. I mouthed the word gambol over and over, mouthed...
Grieving
She wrapped my little hand inside her long, thick fingers and guided me up the aisle toward a line of crying women. When it came my turn to walk up, I...
Why nonfiction?
You’ve probably noticed that Phoebe is taking a big step: We’re now accepting nonfiction submissions.
That’s the...