nonfiction
(to read any of the stories below, click the story's title.)
By Alison CerneyGOD: Is that Capital or Small G/g?“And then I hit forty. Bitterness seeped in: I had done everything Walt Disney and God taught me, but I was definitely not experiencing happily-ever-after. . . . I realized sadly that with a friend like God, I didn’t need enemies.” By Paul Alan FaheyLost in the Moment“If there is a heaven, I hope it will be these four men under a band shell, and Mother and I huddled together, toes tapping, cares forgotten, lost in the moment.” By Elizabeth P. GlixmanIt Happened to My Father“The word lymphoma sounds so harmless to the medically uneducated, like a bubble-bath ingredient. Foam, phoma. Warm and fuzzy. Oh Dad has the bubble bath disease.” By Dianne McKnightOn the Nature of Miracles“I set up housekeeping with things I scavenged from the trash. . . . I’d picture what I needed, and more times than not when my dog and I made our neighborhood rounds after dark . . . I’d find something at least in the right category.” |
By Patricia ParkinsonEmpathy“Brunette heads turn—there are no blondes, not the blonde I seek, I miss, who’d be sitting next to me saying, ‘Why the fuck do we come to these things?’ ” By Helen RuggieriRothko’s Chapel“There are no symbols or myths to contemplate here, only the silence of our inner selves. That’s the chill, that’s the truth, that’s the emptiness.” By Kate WatsonCasting Stones“I’m not a prude, but I was a little shocked at a drug deal going down right behind me. It seemed to me that this was the sort of thing that should happen in dark alleyways, not within earshot of a forty-year-old woman.” By Leslie WolterThe Flash of Wings“While orphaned children were being granted the precarious, precious right to continue breathing . . . my own child was emerging wet and wonderful into welcoming arms. I shudder to think how completely unaware I was of the gift I was being given.” |
