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Marriage
Fiction
The Portal
The second portal to Mere had been two feet high and three feet across. Amber knew this because later she returned to that exact spot beside the woods and measured where the portal had been using her wooden school ruler. She did not know the size of the first portal because she had been much younger then — just six; she was seventeen now — and so she had overlooked many important details.
March 2016
The Dog-Eared Page
The Ledge
The boy did for the fisherman the greatest thing that can be done. He may have been too young for perfect terror, but he was old enough to know there were things beyond the power of any man. All he could do he did, by trusting his father to do all he could, and asking nothing more.
February 2016
Poetry
The Same Movies
He never listens to my dreams. “Dreams / aren’t real,” he says dismissively. And he’d prefer it / if I filled out a rebate for a toothbrush instead of starting another / poem.
February 2016Poetry
Ode To A Summer Evening In France
We ate snails from their shells, dipped bread in the sauce. / The man we were visiting poured more wine, / said he hoped we’d stay a long time.
February 2016
Poetry
Selected Poems
— from “For This” | It is for this / we have been torn / and mended / and torn again.
January 2016The Dog-Eared Pageexcerpted from
excerpted from
A Grief Observed
I had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine. The end of hers would be the coming-of-age of mine. We were setting out on different roads. This cold truth, this terrible traffic regulation (“You, Madam, to the right — you, Sir, to the left”) is just the beginning of the separation which is death itself.
October 2015Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
When No One Is Watching
I’ve come to love this island. Hawaii has mostly been subdued by human habitation, but there are still pockets of wilderness, like this one. A trail from our land leads to where I’m sitting on a tablecloth beside the stream with my laptop. When I look at my computer screen, I see my reflection, in which my bald head is hidden by a scarf. I’ve had no hair for six months now, a constant reminder that I have breast cancer.
August 2015
Poetry
Needs
I need a hug from you, from behind, as I’m standing at the kitchen window, washing dishes and looking at the one pink-flowering branch left on the peach tree.
August 2015Poetry
The Pearls
An engagement present from my husband’s parents, / they seemed like something from a yearbook photograph. / I’d have preferred a wrought-iron pendant, costume / beads that caught the sunlight.
June 2015
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