Short Stories

5 MINMy psychology professors won’t admit it, but to truly understand people, try spending some time as a waitress. As a “busgirl” in my college dining hall, I learned to spot freshmen trying to hide an eating…

8 MINWe reached Zacatecas in the early evening. After two long days driving through the desert from Ciudad Juárez, we were excited to explore the first of the old colonial towns that dot the backbone of…

< 1 Her handwriting leans

6 MINThe squeal pierces the quiet Sunday afternoon. Unmistakably swine. I lift my head, wipe my bottom lip with the back of my hand. The muted television screen shows swaths of bright green grass, shorn close….

10 MINIgnoring my sense of foreboding, I concentrated on Charlie, my husband of less than a year as he emptied his apple picking bag into a basket. “With all this help, your mother’s orchard will be…

16 MIN“You can’t swim without a lifeguard.” The voice cuts through the hum of the lake. I crane my head and find a blur of bodies gathered around a campfire further down the shore. Their faces…

6 MINWe found the rabbit rotting in the garden by the porch’s northeastern corner. Flies buzzed all over its little brown body, and there were a few bees inexplicably crawling on its soft fur, and one…

9 MIN“Tell me your name,” he said.  “There is power in names,” she whispered, creamy skin with an iridescent powder sheen seeming to glow in the dim, red, light. She made a show of stepping one…

11 MINGet married in a museum they said. It would be perfect they said.How romantic! How unique! How unconventional! I had once thought so, too. I can barely remember its name at present, but it is,…

4 MINGod must have truly loved my ancestors, or else none of them or me would have ever survived.  We ate from the country hillbilly dishes of life’s recipes back when gun-toters were still considered hunters….

8 MINThe rose was trying to get in again. She couldn’t blame it. Outside the wind was howling, a vicious, embittering thing, so ferocious it seemed animate. The plaintive scratch of the rose’s thin, narrow fingers…