Litany

While I still remember, the color of the snow before me while behind me on the high ridge, fire sings through the dry timber at dawn, driving us down to the river.

Mechanical Difficulty

—Kathy, please prepare the cabin for takeoff.
—You already said that, sir. Sir? Brian?
—Is the cabin prepared?
—We’re airborne, sir.
—I’d like to hear that from Troy, please.
—We’re airborne, sir.

Overpromised Heart

I promised my daughter my heart, forgetting it wasn’t mine. You were there, fat with her, already weary of the burden and beautiful, intolerably beautiful. You made demands: a hairbrush, a mirror, not that hairbrush, ice yes but not ice chips, a delivery date—

Shapes in the Blue

We were twelve and stupid, American kids living in America, lying on our backs at recess. You like that? We lay on our backs side by side in the sun, in the grass, full of youth, looking for shapes in the clouds.

Bobcat in a Box

Life may be short but forgetting takes forever, especially when they leave something behind. It’ll be four years now since Bob walked out with nowhere in particular to go, just trying to make distance from me.

Baby’s Empty Bed

The humid summer heat was murderous. Every year one or two were killed in our town, cooked in their rooms. At our house on the avenue, a fan in the attic drew refreshment from the night through our open bedroom windows and pulled the hot air up the attic stairs.

Firebug

It starts as a comic premonition. He yoinks the plug from the drain in the floor of the ocean. He mans the big shovel that scoops whole countries at a time. A ravishing storm of flame consumes the sky and is not satisfied and goes looking.

Movie Night

The room is dark and smells of disinfected pee with a hint of vanilla. Eleanor Barney must be here. Most of us have been wheeled into places and parked facing the screen but younger people with red ears are crowded onto folding chairs, noisy with outdoor talk, coats in their laps.

Alphabet Soup

I don’t know this man across the table but if we’re dating, I’m a reasonably lucky woman, depending on my age, my looks. I don’t know much. A plate of eggs and bacon before him, scrambled soft, I believe they call it and nearby, toast in uneven stacks, so the meal is underway. Is this breakfast?

One Step Back

The day I nearly lost him, he was such a little man. Rolling his miniature suitcase down the concourse with his boarding pass, threading his way through the taller adults, he looked back just once like a confident boy friend, roguish that he was in the lead, then disappeared from the face of the earth, a suddenly vulnerable child without his mother.