death

I wouldn’t walk away from my mother’s dead body. After my sisters and I had washed her breasts, belly, arms, and smoothed scented cream over her soft, soft papery skin,…

Image Credit: Brett Jordan via Unsplash   One Sunday evening, I tucked myself into bed earlier than usual with the intention of getting a long night’s rest before the busy…

Image Credit: Megan Perra   You’ve probably heard this one before. When I was six years old, my father left our family. He left Virginia for Florida, weaved in and…

Image: Thom Steinbeck and the author, Diana Raab   When we think of suicide, we usually think of it as a sudden, contemplated, or premeditated act. We rarely regard it…

* * * One Santa Clara summer day, in my apartment, the stone cat stared at a plastic rose against a sky so white the window seemed to fog. And…

Image Credit: Dev Murphy   My mother called me last week to tell me she had dreamed of her sister Christy’s trip to the hospital before it happened. Minor illness.…

I pick up the flat fledgling looking for the fall in purple fluid swell filling transparent cranium, dark blue blooming under the pink sheer of skin, so thin. There’s no…

After my mother didn’t wake up; after the snow drifted down to mix with dirt like cream as the gravediggers heaped earth atop her casket; after the drive home to…

* * * There was a poem waiting in the dead bird on my car. I did not want to know it, did not want to know that death, couldn’t…

Need Not I need not fly I fold my wings I bow my head I wait for things I need not feel you Everywhere I need not breathe In so…

Image Credit: Nick Fewings   Just before Christmas in 2006, I met my one true love in the most unlikely, modern way. My best buddy Rae had helped me onto…

French epi with pull-apart leaves left on the counter. Croissants flavored with chocolate, raspberry, almond, and cheese. Deli trays, brownie bites, and fruit-filled bouquets. Loaf after loaf—rye, sourdough, wheat. Frozen…

Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich Twelve Books, 2018 256 pages / Twelve   Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler Random House, 2018 208 pages…

[Image Credit: Elyse Holmes] My mother was propped up on pillows like a thin doll. The dusky yellow of her skin caught in the light of the bedside lamp and…