My mom died yesterday. No bull, well maybe a tiny bull, by the time you read this it may have been last week, last month, or last year, but I’m pretty sure she will still be dead. I am not astonished. I am not mollified. I am not even a tad bit sad. By contrast, my German Shepherd died four months ago, and I had to be medicated. Our relationship was not a good one, the one with my mom, not the dog. I loved my dog.
Continue reading “My Mom Died Yesterday by Zora Foote”
The front door is already locked but I find Dan hanging around the tree in the backyard, legs curled up around the topmost branch as if he’s the Cheshire cat or something. No stripes, but the swagger to pass as one, all smug and smiling. Eminently punchable. He gestures at me to come up, casually, the way someone might give orders to a dog. The last time I saw him he owned a slobbery mastiff he would feed Grade A beef to.
Continue reading “Treehouse by Hanwen Zhang”
Snow happens quietly in many places, often overnight, without drama. Pull back the curtains before sunrise and under the streetlamps a sulphur tinted fondant drapes over everything – the rows of Victorian terraced houses on either side of the street, the pavement, cars, wheelie bins, everything. Garden hedges and shrubs sit undisturbed, revealing dots of evergreen just visible through layers of cotton. Higher up, tree branches, recently bare and springy, now sag wearily as bits of fine powder dust off intermittently in the breeze.
Continue reading “Snow Happens by Eileen Emmanuel”
Beth dies the night she packs her honeymoon suitcase. She folds a red-fringed shawl and places it carefully on top of her clothes. She zips up the suitcase and wheels it to the front door.
“I’m good to go.”
Her husband, Pete, walks into the room.
“What do you mean you’re good to go? Where are we going?”
“Oh, Pete.”
I’m well aware there are endless possibilities, limitless universes where people live rather than die, where situations work out rather than fall apart, where superb memories are made rather than never created, and where love blossoms rather than weakens. I’m unsure how to reach these complex destinations, but I know they’re out there, situated somewhere on a higher dimension or hidden behind the veil we call reality. They conceal all the could-have-beens, circumstances that might have occurred if given the opportunity but, of course, never came to fruition due to some seen or unseen event…
Continue reading “The Could-Have-Beens by Mason Yates”
SUNDAY 7:00 p.m. … Cynthia closes the door. She earned the privilege. Privacy. The quiet of the dayroom after hours. She turns on the lamp and positions the green upholstered chair, its back to the wall of windows and next to the table with the telephone, completing the ritual she’s performed every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday evening for two months.
Continue reading “Evenings by Joanne Parsons”
She comes every June to set us free. Zooms into our neat little neighborhood, somehow boiling a cloud of dust from Grandma’s swept asphalt, brakes squealing like a stunt driver. Grandma’s jaw works but she forces the corners of her mouth up, tries to smile a welcome. The car fishtails in, parks crooked as a middle finger. A brown foot, naked, toenails the color of a freshly skinned knee, heels open the driver’s door and a cardboard cup in a long-fingered hand appears. Immediately upends. A brown waterfall of liquid and half-melted ice splatters the driveway, and as it rivers down to the street I hear it: that wonderful voice. Yuck, flat, Aunt Glory announces, and summer begins.
Continue reading “Dirty Summer by Jennifer Maloney”
“I won’t talk about the past anymore,” she said. “I’m only talking about what will happen from now on. I’m using this pain to make something wonderful.”
He held her hand, like he had so many times. Her masculine hands. Creative hands for making wonderful things. Like her saddest smile.
Continue reading “Doll Parts by Ximena Escobar”
When things became worse, I brought my mother to our abandoned-since-Dad-died beach house for the summer. A sabbatical and a newly west coasted daughter freed me to lug Mom like a bag of silent, bewildered groceries into the passenger’s seat of my car. We sped along the highway from the city to the coast, chasing the rickety car of Mom’s memory, lumbering just ahead. I savored the hopeful sensation of control and the encroaching smell of sulfury sea air.
Continue reading “Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Mother with Dementia by Maggie Nerz Iribarne”
Jennifer finished the last slice of defrosted quiche she’d bought from the freezer shop on Monday. She switched off the gas fire. In the kitchen she rinsed off the plate under the tap, pastry crumbs, and slotted it on the drying rack. She put on her coat, shoes, unlocked the back door, stepped outside, locked it, and walked the five minutes to the bus stop nearest her house.
Continue reading “The Circle Route by Paul Kimm”
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