The Cutting Board

The next day was entirely different. Longer hours of sun were bringing the thaw. Victor had gone ice-fishing alone on the mostly frozen lake, not frozen enough where he had fallen through.

Rescue Work

I’m a matter-of-fact girl in a clerical collar with a few things of value to share. One, it’s good to share. Two, everybody has value. I can’t explain death or the consequences it casts backward into our lives or forward onto our survivors but I’ve measured some of those shadows where I live.

White Cross

This godforsaken gravel shoulder is as good a place—as bad a place—as any to have made your peace with life and dying. Still, you probably objected. Not here, you said, by which you meant, Not yet.

The Rope Climber

Summer camp for boys had been a nightmare of fellowship and other itchy rashes. For weeks, he had tried to find somebody he could like or a hiding place, but they had pestered him with bows and arrows, canoes and climbing ropes. The ropes he liked.

Something Like Mercy

The box is richly padded and, for one who won’t be stirring, roomy. I should have lived as comfortably, in darkness as conducive to long remembering. This is no way to begin. I am paper and bone in a box under earth as blunt as a clod. My words should be simple as sand.

Ghostly

On the edge of my bed, his outline brightened by moonlight, his profile sharp and reassuring just as it was, then later at the market his round shoulder turning, hawk’s brow silent and still, his little cap tipped so familiarly, thereafter whenever I need him,

Sisters

They could be sisters, Rachel and Ayat, 18 and 17, dark and doomed. Now departed they are photographs, not girls; they are headshots looking forward, side by side on newsstands and on TV screens, never meeting. They never met.

Shoes Like Mirrors

At age six, we are wiser than at any other age. We know things nobody could have told us and we keep them to ourselves. Before I forget everything forever, shall I tell you what it was like for me that day? You know what it did to my sisters.

Becoming the Bull

Yesterday I was grazing and cruising the heifers in clover. This morning I stand at the edge of the bull ring in sawdust and bullshit and sand, listening to music to salute an armada, triumphant strains for a dusty empire from trumpeters sniffing for blood.

Lucid Dreams

Life is the skirmish our dreams are meant to resolve. Lucid dreamers like Bernard don’t leave it to chance; they’ve trained themselves to take control in sleep. They lie down with a plan they repeat like a mantra. The first time he looks at his watch, Bernard sees numbers; the second time, numbers again. The third time, his watch is a coin on a strap and Bernard knows he’s dreaming and sets to work.