Fiction

I don’t tell him of the dream I had, or how when I watch my boys skating with Clair, I see a different pond, one I haven’t been to in years.

There is before and there is after. Nothing else matters some days, but this morning I hear the horses nickering gently to each other in the corral outside my window, waiting for me to get up and feed them.

When Kaye was honest with herself, she would acknowledge that she belonged with this set only as long as she adhered to a scripted role: The bold, no-nonsense Black Mama.

Wasn’t sleep training supposed to last forever? Apparently not. More water, another book, another hug, two trips to the bathroom, more water…At least now they are asleep. Ah, a quiet home. Is there anything holier?

9:05. They’d be 10 to 15 minutes late to Trevor’s preschool at this point, 20 to kindergarten, a more serious crime. But if she swung by the elementary school first and backtracked all the way up Pearl, they’d all be late—including her.

I imagine her beautiful, hair the color of Baltic amber that swizzles past her waist, a laugh that soars to the heavens. She glides through the room, feet barely touching the ground, barely stirring the air.

The two of them had always disagreed about parenting. For Merle, parenting was a seesaw. You enjoyed the highs and suffered the lows. But Bud saw things differently.

My love surrounds, infiltrates, permeates. It needs no witnessing to be understood as utterly true, self-evident. Like gravity.

Some people do not like olives. They just don’t. And nothing is going to change that, no matter how needy and worthy those olives are.

But there was no leaving me to silently watch the rise and fall of his chest. The voices weren’t going away. They were impossible to ignore.

It was two in the morning. The drum of sadness beat inside her until the building pressure pushed tears out, until she could only see the blur around her. She…