Story

The water was rising fast, swallowing the fields he’d worked his whole life. Yet Jacob Miles clung to that worn wooden chair like it was the last piece of his soul—because in a way, it was. Part 1 — The Garden Before the Storm Jacob Miles was seventy-two and moved like the barn doors he’d […]

Part 1: They Turned My Library Into a Gym They tore down the poetry section to make room for treadmills.That was the first thing they told me when I came by to return my key. Forty-two years I worked in that building. I watched children grow up and have children of their own. I shelved

Part 4 — The Sunday Chair Part 3 — The Mailbox That Started Answering Back Part 2 — The Collar in the Fifty-Cent Bin I kept putting dog biscuits in that empty mailbox for three winters after she died.Didn’t matter that the house was boarded up, didn’t matter that the beagle started limping. He still

Part 1 He Made Me Promise Not to Cry “Promise me you won’t cry.”That’s what he said, three nights before the morphine made his voice go soft. “I’m just takin’ a short trip.” And like a damn fool, I promised. I’ve worked as a nurse at Maple Hollow Senior Home for twenty-three years. You learn

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

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