Published in Ruminate.

In one variation, the Children ask the Mother for permission to move their bodies in certain ways across the field. She’s across the field, a figure turned away from them, gaze fixed on something in the trees. The Children are limber. The Mother, unpredictable.

Published in The Rupture.

If I take any heed from Beatrix, I will bring you to life only after boiling your bones and sleeping with them, half-articulated, under my pillow. That was her idea of childhood. Mine might have looked similar had I not felt so brittle next to death. And water. And heat. And sleep. Mine was a pink room stuffed with two sisters.

Published in Ruminate.

I, too, have lost my child in bear country. Show me a mother who hasn't.

I, too, have felt fear grow legs, gallop through me, snap my sternum. Have run to any thicket that could hide a child and her empty pail. When you run, you could run faster.

Published in storySouth.

Not everything that grows is good.

Take Jonny’s drinking. Not so terrible when it’s just the newlyweds, sharing a night shift as janitors at the elementary school. He wears his dancing shoes, she, her high-laced kid boots and a cherry wool fascinator.

Published in Oxford American.

The sailboats of imagination only float so far. When your Max settles into his, surrenders to the sea, in and out of weeks, he is nowhere new. His boat is any boat.