Stories

She replied to Derek's message without opening the thread, and the weekend never quite started. A story about work that keeps a thumb on your days off.

He circled a peach in the catalog and wrote a year five years out, in the handwriting he saved for important things. He did not get the five years.

I lifted the first plate out of its tissue the way I used to lift baby birds that had fallen into the yard - both hands, barely breathing. The paper had gone th...

My father kept the pocket watch in the left breast pocket of his good coat, the charcoal one he wore to funerals and job interviews and once, memorably, to a

He had a thermos the color of old mustard wedged under one arm, and he set it on the Civic's roof while he worked the bungee cord over the cooler lid, hooking i...

Fourteen names on a Post-it she knew by heart, a tablecloth three generations old, and a dime turning the brass bracket that holds the extra leaf.

The chrome had gone brass at the center, rubbed down to something warmer by fifty-three years of hands. Gerald set the wrench against the mounting bracket and l...

Dennis's hand was already on the handle before he checked his watch, which read 7:08, which was the same as yesterday. The newspaper under his arm still had its...

Renata's neighbor, Carl, had a tomato problem the way some people have a religion. He kept a mason jar of last year's dried seeds on his windowsill, labeled in ...