“Girl thinks about what happens when someone has a heart attack. How the main artery becomes too blocked to allow oxygen to pass. That without oxygen, the…… Read more “A Fantastic Stare”

            There was a time I wanted to meet each thing that happened—at a party, the next person who came through the door; the next great philosophical…… Read more “Seek to Live a Quiet Life”

‘Look, mom, I see a red bird!’ I tell her it’s a cardinal, but she only cares about the paint it leaves in her memory. It is…… Read more “The Queen of Heaven”

It’s no secret that Mother’s Day can be stressful for many people. For me, it was watching my mother-in-law, a woman who had a hand in raising…… Read more “April showers bring May powers”

What happened the day you named me? Were my cheeks olive and tired from resisting the light, chapped from an extra week spent in a womb tired…… Read more “To my mother, the enigma”

Age ten was the first time I thought about being forty—the age Oscar Wilde was when he was imprisoned and wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. I…… Read more “For He Who Lives More Lives Than One…”

I am 8, I am reading the dictionary, I have been through the American Medical Association book four times front-to-back. I read Wilde and Poe and understand…… Read more “Many Sparrows”

Think back to a time when you were mocked for something you loved. Feel that pain. What did you do with it? Did you laugh it off,…… Read more “Mercy in Our Words”