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—

Have You Seen This Child?

When the night voices tremble in your heart, so do you hear where each of us is, except for me, except for the one who doesn’t call. Your bed is damp with not knowing. Left to the black glass and right to your husband, you shake your head No all night.

Girl for Sale

Neighbors and strangers are holding bits of my childhood up to the sunlight, the better to judge them. Mom and I have arranged the tables in loose chronological order; attentive shoppers moving clockwise will see my unformed adolescent self unfold into hopeful young womanhood over there by the plum tree.

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.

Quick Recovery

During the funeral in his old hometown he didn’t give it a thought but when he needed a ride to the airport and couldn’t think who to ask he discovered he was in all the world alone in that particular way,

Bridge Toll

My son’s a nice enough kid, I suppose, flaky as all get-out, but a hard worker when he sets his mind to something, which is the problem. I offered him a way into the business, but he never cracked the binder. Plus, he qualified for military officer training, but he went kamikaze on his interview.

Hemlock Kiss

That was your idea of an apology, old man?—that preposterous collection of sophistry and insults? Did you forget you were talking to a jury of 500 farmers? Athens is still a democracy, whatever you may wish. 251 farmers can stop all debate.

The Childhood He Never Had

At 26, with the assistance of a team of psychological facilitators spending down a healthy post-doctoral research grant, he began to retrieve repressed memories of abuse he had suffered as a child

Similar Ducks

I had been seeing her, always at the same place, muttering to the same or similar ducks, for weeks before I ventured to speak to her. If I had not had crackers in my pocket I would never have begun our little commerce with an offer of food,