The bags are packed when I come through the door and Lily is nowhere in sight. My stomach starts going over on itself, pushing out against my organs like a morning after drinking. She got everything. I feel the spidery frame of the Whisperlite beneath the nylon lid, check the straps on the sleeping bags [...]

She listened to the rhythm of the dishwasher jets hum in the kitchen down the hallway.  The cast crunched beneath the scissors, the cold metal of the blades chilling her skin.  His forearms strained as he attempted to cut all the way through.  Bits of the cast crumbled and scattered all over the comforter and [...]

That evening, after I’d patched myself up, she called me to the back porch to point out a double rainbow, duel arcs untouching, colliding into the hill behind our house. She stood with arms crossed, shirt still stained with the sauce and wine of her latest fit, hair unwashed for how many days I wish [...]

My wife quit smoking again when she got hired full time at the community college. After that we didn’t go to the Pub anymore. She couldn’t watch strangers light up, and she didn’t want to run into her comp students playing pool. We took to drinking our evenings on our back deck, where she would [...]

Any time Carla willed it, the people disappeared. First her mother who slapped her across the face when she was despondent. Then her father who visited her at night when he was careless. Later on it was her boyfriend. He didn’t love her in the right way. Then it was her best friend because she [...]

At standard pressure water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. 100 degrees Celsius. 373 Kelvin. The bathwater is 102 degrees Fahrenheit. 39 degrees Celsius. 312 Kelvin. I scrub my skin with a mixture of honey and coffee grains. She always had the softest skin. I scoop a fingerful into my mouth and want it to taste [...]

I am sorry if I want to tie you to a tree. But it would be a fine, fine, tree. A tree strong with ridges like stone and a way within itself that fights both breezes and birds like it can’t stand what every other tree lets themselves be, become. Never ending victims: the shame [...]

The father drags the razor along the camber of his jaw, over the nub of his chin, and a tiny red drop pools and hangs there. The stubble is clumped on the razor, forming an ugly trough of hair. Hot water from the tap blasts the blob into the sink and he cleans his hands, [...]

Friday nights in high school we used to drive out to where Sutton becomes Neltnore for bonfires and drinking parties. We never got caught. Nothing out there but bluestem and prairie flower, and anyway a giant boulder on the west side of Route 59 obscured our revelries from the road. In the firelight we’d drink [...]

Maybe it’s post-bad-date heartache. Maybe it’s because you’re sitting in a burgundy convertible, a vintage ‘67 Mustang, top down, parked in the gas station’s only handicapped spot, June bugs butting the red and yellow Kangaroo sign above. Because it’s minutes until midnight. Because it’s only you and the pencil-necked attendant who watches you through the [...]