I’d already missed two periods before I went to Planned Parenthood in Berkeley. I knew the result before a woman asked if I wanted counseling. She had a lovely voice. “I always say, you’re the one to ask the questions of yourself. Who do you see in yourself, Gina, what do you want?” I answered that I was thirty-five, unmarried, and didn’t know what I wanted. “But my hormones aren’t neutral,” I laughed. “They’re saying yes but I just don’t know.” She asked about my circumstances. “The father is not committed but I’d like him … Continue reading Distances by Barbara Baer→
My four-year-old granddaughter, “Zoe”, lives out-of-state. We often meet via Zoom. She and I share a screen and explore her burning questions by searching YouTube videos. Last Saturday morning, Zoe wanted to know: Do unicorns exist? Are mermaids real? We discovered that unicorn sightings might have been skinny rhinoceros or possibly rare Italian one-horned deer. We also learned that mermaids likely were manatees basking on boulders and the wishful thinking of sailors who had been at sea too long. This news didn’t crush the child. A week later, though, when I asked what she wanted … Continue reading Deconstructing Unicorns and Mermaids by Deborah M. Prum→
She is a large woman. In another place or circumstance, she would have been the woman in the flowery housedress with fluffy mules on her feet. She would have been the lady you always seem to get stuck next to on the bus when it is hot and crowded and everyone has to hold onto the strap. She would have been the one with the smelly armpits. But she fits no clichés. She has money from sources unknown. She has a style so cosmopolitan it makes your teeth hurt. She’s always waving. Hello. Bye-bye. … Continue reading Adrienne by Lisa Ben-Shoshan→
What happens to the homes where we once lived? Homes we left behind, in childhood when it wasn’t a choice, as an adult when it was necessary for work or, as elders, for health reasons or to be closer to family. We can track them down via Google maps, but I suggest they no longer exist. Those places where we once lived, and especially those we once loved, exist only in memory, and, if we’re lucky, in the imagination. I hold onto places I’ve loved by writing fiction set there. Writing helps me process loss. … Continue reading Holding Onto The Past Through Fiction by Virginia Pye→
Spring. Finally. After several snowstorms, ice, and being stuck in the house for days on end, Louise couldn’t wait to get in her yard. The daffodils had bloomed, the forsythia had appeared on stage and the February camellias were still struggling with their winter memories. There was plenty of work to do: mulching, feeding, cleaning up windblown trash, picking up sticks, planting grass seed, trimming bushes, pulling her pots out; she was so glad she had her yardman Buddy to help, insofar as her husband Robert wasn’t much help. The garden, other than family and … Continue reading So Be It by Tyler Scott→
The sixty-year-old woman is sleeping at the moment, so I sit on a worn brown couch in the family waiting room down the hall from Shirley. It’s not too far from the intensive care ward where she lays on the white, white sheets, connected in too many ways to the machines that keep her alive or that measure whether she is, or is not. This windowless refuge gives no hints about day or night, winter or summer. Two half-done jigsaw puzzles await completion on small tables. There is a television, but it isn’t on. Shelves … Continue reading By Shirley’s Side by Peter Wallace→
Mark didn’t want to go to Jackie and Jonathan’s—he had too much studying to do before the end of the semester—but Marci insisted. “You can’t study all the time,” she said, but he was the only one of the four of them in graduate school, and was under pressures they weren’t. “Can we at least leave right after we eat?” he asked. “No walks in the woods this time?” Marci gave him a sideways glance. Getting back to Boston from the North Shore on a Sunday was never an easy drive, and the later you … Continue reading Cheesecake by Con Chapman→
X/@/20X÷ Today the puppeteer cut my strings. Then he left without a word. It feels strange to move my arms on my own. I opened every plastic pickle jar in the dollhouse, just to try them out. The pickles inside were frozen in clear acrylic. I always imagined it being liquid. My body is mine for the first time, but it doesn’t feel like it yet. Tomorrow, I’ll get scissors and a dotted line painted all down my arms. That way if anyone else ever wants to string me up again, they know I’ll … Continue reading Puppet and Master by Karris Rae→
Lissy is already dressed, her dolls arranged next to the bed in the space that is sometimes a boat, sometimes a park, and often a doctor’s office. The toys are all hues, different nationalities, from newborn to school-age, with sizes that don’t really make sense when placed next to each other. The two Barbies, who were inexpertly gifted to my daughter, live in the closet. Their boo-zooms, career ensembles, and matching footwear are of no interest to the kindergartner. “Hello, little girl!” I say. “Hello, little mother,” she smiles. “Whoa, why does Susan have all … Continue reading Complicity—A True Fiction Of Now by Erika Raskin→
“There’s something you should know,” was how he would put it. He would say this while she was doing something else—years later, in a Solana Beach cottage two blocks from the Pacific, Annie could still remember exactly where she’d been, what she’d been doing, the way one does looking back at a national tragedy. These were not national tragedies but at once less and more, news that struck to the bone, altering her immediate world more than a presidential assassination. What Andrew remembered was how she stopped what she was doing and turned her … Continue reading Grater by Debby Mayer→
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