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A thirty-five year old mother at my son’s preschool didn’t wake up on Sunday morning. There was no warning. No goodbye. Leslie died in her sleep, leaving behind a shocked…

The circumstances surrounding Donna’s death make me feel uncharacteristically mellow. Waterlogged garlic peels wreathe the sink. I notice how much they look like miniature tea bags. Our dinner guests left…

I spotted her when I rounded a bend. She was by the side of the road, in the shadow of trees which line old Route 19, a slow narrow route…

Margaret suddenly had a yearning for cake. Chocolate cake. She had six boxes of cake mix to choose from in the pantry. She took two from the shelf and set…

Ghost season, my daughter calls it. The time the dead draw nearer. The wasps are hungry. They flit along the clothesline among the muggy towels, slick sheets, lick sweat off…

My five-year-old daughter slides her fingers between her thighs holds her hand out to me and says, “smell.” I hesitate, bring my nose closer to her hand, take a token…

Bring me the bedding that held his sleep and blind I’d know it as his. Pungent smell with an acrid edge, like delicious food just starting to turn. Since infancy,…

Suddenly my children are ill. Dragged out like old rags, dead dogs. They are gray in the face, limp, shadowy. And I am dazed from the night vigil. Dragged out…

My five-year-old refers to my mother, the grandmother she has never met, by asking, “What would Betty say when you were mean to Aunt Connie?” Then I tell a story…

Laura allows herself this. Allows herself this first moment to stand under the stream of near-scalding water. Really it only feels this way. The water is nowhere near scalding because…

The first time I saw Rita she was watering her lawn. Our house had come fully furnished yet there were no curtains. I was sitting Indian style on the sofa…