While Denizen worked I walked. I ran. I discovered 45 new words for mangroves, another 17 for the reflections of water on leaves. The word for alcoholic drink, I found at a beach bar, had changed sometime in the 19th Century from horseshoe-bat-behind-your-eyes to death-will-call. Peop...
But there was no prayer in Joel's mind; rather, nothing a net of words could capture, for, with one exception, all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say so...
“You refer to a partnership. A mutually agreed-upon list of terms and conditions; for richer, for poorer, and all that. It is a business venture, nothing more.” Annabelle pursed her lips. She was far from a romantic, but she’d be damned if she ever entered a union with a man w...
For more than a year after she’d been cleared of heartworm, she’d come on walks with us and, while there would be panic moments here and there and, at times, an especially bad walk where I really wondered if walks were the right thing for her, for the most part, she did just f...
As she glares at me with insolently pursed lips, the woman’s glasses reflect the pained face of a very hot and very disappointed young captain — one who, barely past his 24th birthday, often finds that the hardest thing about his job is resisting the urge to take it for granted. I ...
“She has felt restless, doubtless, and went for page 152 a walk, though the hour was certainly a strange one.” Mrs. Adams pursed her lip and shook her head. But then as she stood at the casement, the girl beneath looked smilingly up at her and beckoned to her with a merry gest...
The blonde man gazed at the other, his lips pursed and his expression uneasy."Do you understand that she may be the oldest one still alive? She may have all the answers I'm looking for." said the man wearing the hood, placing his hands on the table."Or she will just destroy you,...
In other words, my story was my own, but it also looked and sounded like many other people from this place, region, and country. I know American-ness from the perspective I inhabit, that of a white female raised by working class parents in the Midwest. My chaffing desire to know other...