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

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,

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.