I am Robert Bowers. I do not have enough. I do not have enough money or love or acceptance. I do not have enough social capital or political power or cultural prominence. I am on the margins of a society…
Our coach driver. Our second coach driver. The weird dude I met in the youth hostel who told me the story of how he “ruined his life” (I murmured something about Oscar Wilde’s *De Profundis* being a comforting read when…
The room is quiet when I enter. A circle of chairs around a plain table, flowers and a few books in the center. Perhaps thirty people are sitting silently. Sunlight streams through the large windows. The walls are plain white.…
Midnight. Pitch black. On these rural, winding roads are many carcasses--deer, rabbits, chipmunks, raccoons, and most of all, opossums. I’ve been driving this same route to and from work for almost three years, and I haven’t hit an animal yet.…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single young woman in possession of an imagination must imagine herself the heroine in an Austen novel. It is a truth much less acknowledged that a middle-aged woman reading Jane Austen hears…
It’s early. Still dark. The alarm goes off and I hit snooze and roll over, dreading the day ahead. I am anxious about many things, some in my control and some out of my control. I remind myself that it…
“What are The Questions, mommy?” I’m cuddling with my youngest son as he’s drifting slowly to sleep. I don’t know what he means by this meta-question. He clarifies. “The questions. Five w’s and one atch.” “Ah. Who, what, when, where,…
When I was young and the world was warmly lit by wood fire and the ponies were fluffy in their soft winter coats and the seasons turned from wet and cold to colder and wetter, we feasted like kings on…
Let me be a thief. Or rather, let me be the thief. You remember him. Stripped and pinned, dismantled and disoriented, he hangs between life and death, this world and the next. Christ slumps nearby, a make-shift sign above his head…
I reach above my head to re-position the newly-washed ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers, my hands still a little wet and soapy. Then, the inevitable. One of the shakers escapes my slippery grasp and crashes to the floor. My husband calls from…
