Part 1 – The Ones Who Don’t Make It I can still hear the boy choking—thirty years later, he still doesn’t breathe. That sound lives in the back of my skull. Not a scream, not a word. Just the raw panic of lungs begging for air. You learn to measure time in breaths when you […]
Her mama died last Tuesday, but she still ordered the pancakes. I noticed her before the door even chimed. Some people carry ghosts behind their eyes, and this one had a whole congregation. She stood on the doormat like she was waiting for permission to come back into her own memory. Rain had left dark
📘 Part 3 – The Girl with the Crooked Braids 📘 Part 2 — The Clock I Never Set Part 1 The Last Day “Today, a 7-year-old told me I was useless.”That’s how my last day as a public school teacher began. No smirk. No attitude. Just a plain, indifferent voice—like he was commenting on
~ a short story for those who remember what it meant to stay, even when it hurt ~ She died on a Wednesday. That’s the part I never forget. Not the tumor. Not the weight loss. Not the sound of her mother crying in the hallway. Just that it was Wednesday. Blue scrubs, coffee gone
I Was the Nurse in Room 14 Read More »
PART 3 — “The Year They Paved the Feed Store Lot” Part 2 – “The Last Sunday Dinner” Part 1 – What the Rain Didn’t Wash Away They shot my dog on a Sunday morning, and I still brought in the harvest that year. People don’t ask much after a line like that. They shift
My father died with tomato sauce on his hands and my name on his lips. He didn’t go in a hospital bed. Not in a hospice. Not even in his sleep. He went standing, in his stained apron, in the back kitchen of Vito’s Trattoria on Bloomfield Avenue. His knees buckled just after he reached
Daddy died on a Tuesday, and the fence gave out by Thursday. It wasn’t poetic. It wasn’t dramatic. Just a clean break where the cedar post had rotted through and the wire curled back like a wound left open too long. I came back to the farm in boots too clean and a heart too
She boarded with a stuffed bear and eyes too old for five years. We were already late out of Minneapolis, wind gusting over the runway like God didn’t want us leaving. I was flight attendant number two on Pan Am Flight 67 to Los Angeles. Back then, the uniform still had weight. Crisp navy blue,
The Window Seat Was Always Hers Read More »
She never said much, but her silence was heavier than a bus full of tired people with nowhere left to go. Back when route 34 still ran down Hastings, before they paved over stories with brewpubs and boutiques, I was behind the wheel six days a week. Union job. Good pension. Straight back, clean shirt.
I Drove Her Home Every Tuesday Read More »
The day they cut off my foot, nobody came to visit but the janitor from the old gym. His name was Denny. He brought me a half-warm vending machine coffee and didn’t say much—just nodded once and set it on the tray like I was still worth the trouble. Maybe I was, back then. Maybe
