Worm. Hook. The cast. Ripples over water. Cork aching for a tug. The boy already says he’s bored. But I can’t tell him that bored is just another word for wanting. A state he thinks will last forever, like him, bobbing along in the water, no care what’s below, what might bite. The first time I caught a bass, my father freed it from the hook and slapped its scales across my pale face, playfully, like you tickle a baby just wanting to hear it giggle. But I won’t do the same to him because his …
Still Here
In light of his injuries, my brother packed his things into a van, signed a note to his wife with “In another life,” and dissolved into a cloud of dust off route 15 before returning three months later, healed and out of breath. He was younger than before and more handsome, and a part of us doubted it was him until he told us how he’d lost his leg and two fingers, a story only his wife and I knew. When he walked on both legs to the edge of their pond and emerged on the other side as a fish, we …
We Iron Dad’s Underwear
I find my ghost sitting cross legged on the concrete floor of the laundry room, the place in our house that’s most certainly haunted by things that move between the walls, settle in the crawl space. I imagine they edge forward on elbows and knees like an army man in the muck, emerging from the hole that doubles as its door, wearing nothing but a half broken skull dancing in dust mites and mouse droppings. It’s a split level, the laundry room is half above and half below ground with …
When My Girlfriend’s Head Becomes an Orange in the Middle of the Night
I wonder who it’s for? I’ve always hated oranges. I used to watch my aunt peel them over her speckled brown ash tray, the Virginia Slims slowly buried in citrus. They stained her long, unpainted nails, and it seemed as if she was peeling away her own bitterness with every thoughtful puncture. I should clarify: I’ve always hated the taste of oranges, of searching my mouth for the angry seeds. The texture—too overwhelming. But I would still mimic my aunt and pretend I loved them as she did, …
The First Time I Hear Jane Speak
Jane carrying her tray of corned beef hash into the dining hall. Jane with two small glasses of milk. Jane sitting at the far end of the table next to Rosalind, Francis, Gerdie and Viola. Jane not saying a word. Jane dressed for dinner, as always, in a plaid skirt and dark blue cardigan. On her feet: baby blue thin hospital slippers. Jane smoothing a paper napkin across her lap, carefully, neatly, as Rosalind bullfrog burps beside her. Jane taking one small sip of milk. Jane looking as if she …
Touchdown
Behind the basement stairs was a box of swaddling blankets I know we tossed last summer. I threw them out. I sit on them now cradling my foot like a broken child. It’s terrible how we lose imagination. Maybe it’s nerve we lose. Is there a difference? I was ten, maybe twelve, when my friends and I played this game from the roof. The first kid up the backyard tree, I remember, earned first jump. Whoever came in last got stuck below as quarterback. The idea was, you take turns leaping from …