The Pleasure of Ruins by Trudy Hale Not too long ago, I was walking my black lab down Norwood Road when an acquaintance stopped his truck to chat. He said he was concerned about my […]

Allison Moves In by Margie Shepherd   Allison did not come to the decision to move in with Gregory lightly. She loved her little apartment, absolutely loved it. It was a source […]

Forehand Drive by Amy Foster Myer “How much further down you think it is?” He turned to look at me in the backseat as he drove. Through the front windshield, dark streets I did […]

I Can't Believe It. I Forgot to Read Jane Austen! by E. H. Jacobs I can’t help thinking about what I haven’t read. Every year, I try to read at least one piece of classic literature that I had overlooked, never got […]

An Audio Book Report And Relevant Field Trip by Erika Raskin I listened (why hold a hefty book aloft when you don’t have to?) to Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions For You and shared the following […]

Bonnie's Spell by Tonja Matney Reynolds Bonnie usually loved the drive to Aunt Edda’s house. She’d peer out the backseat window as her mother drove along the section of highway ove […]

White by Holly Day Once upon a time, there was a woman who wanted to have a baby. Or rather, this woman, named Jane, didn’t particularly care whether she had a baby at t […]

Lowcountry Tragedy by Erika Raskin First off, I’m just going to put right out there that I have been known to watch live courtroom TV like it’s a job, attending to whatever case is […]

Stay In Your Own Lane by Erika Raskin The back of my old CRV is adorned with a nearly forty year-old license plate (you can still read it if you squint in a certain light) and three […]

A Small Marvel by Trudy Hale After an eighteen-hour flight with a connection in Dubai, my daughter, Tempe, and I landed in Delhi. Throughout the trip I posted photographs on […]

Put Some Meat On Their Bones by Erika Raskin I once wrote a piece for Publisher’s Weekly about how even people who are terminally disorganized can craft novels. I offered a five-step […]

wish by Harry James The morning sun dappled the kitchen wall with an outline of wind-fumbled leaves loosely hanging on trees, cooking in the early morning heat. On […]

My Wife Is In Love by E. H. Jacobs Five years ago, my wife fell in love. I’m not talking about me (we have been married thirty-nine years, so I hope the falling in love thing happened m […]

Duck Blind by Regina Guarino Across the narrow alley way between row houses, where trash cans totter and feral cats loiter, a window opens onto the neighbors’ kitchen. For o […]

Immersed by Caroline Kahlenberg     People will say it was suicide, but you mustn’t believe them. They’ll say I looked normal at first, a tall woman with long black hair […]

I had heard when you get older you revert to a lot of your tastes and activities when young, but I disregarded it, until I started buying old Joni Mitchell and Buffalo Springfield albums, and listening to the […]

It’s not hard to sneak into the Manhattan Exclusion zone if you know what you’re doing. The Coast Guard mostly looks for the guys who don’t know what they’re doing—the ones who rush past Spuyten Du […]

I’ve held season tickets on the fifty-yard line of health care for a long time, watching in alternating awe and horror at how medical interventions are provided. In the gratitude/wonder department, […]

Rose sat on the front porch, her custom at that dwindling time of day, watching. She tucked a strand of gray-white hair behind an ear. Her rocker squeaked against the floorboards. Light had fallen near […]

‘The silence gathered and struck me. It bashed me broadside from nowhere, as if I’d been hit by a plank. It dropped from the heavens above me like yard goods; ten acres of fallen, invisible sky choked the fie […]