On Wednesdays, you weigh yourself. You note the weight and put it into the two tracking apps that put your weight on a chart by which you can measure your progress – or lack thereof – over the past weeks. Once this is done, you hit Play on the playlist. The timer says you can ...

Static fizzles gray all around me. The baby knows how to say “ssh.” I wish I could make it quiet. Days pass when it’s all I can hear. I see a leaf on the ground and it strikes me that he would have examined it. Pulled it apart. Turned it over to see what’s living ...

Drop your ear to your other shoulder and roll your head over to the other side. Keep your eyes closed. Please. If your eyes are open, disregard the laundry. Just disregard. Breathe in on “dis,” breathe out on “regard.” Disregard.

She thought she’d come for a playdate when in fact, she was there to participate in a massacre. Her face was ashen as she popped the first golden-haired head from the Barbie I handed her. She tossed it into the growing pile beside me, her eyes never leaving mine. The dolls belonged to my sister. ...

Days unravel like a string of lights they pull from the knotted mess left tangled on the floor when they scurried away to the next attraction whilst avoiding taking care of the mass that afforded them a brilliant spectacle of cheer and bloom only to be abandoned when they are no longer enchanted. Around the ...

In one year it’s a shadow, following. Taking the shape of a person. Just not the person she lost.

At the bottom of the sea two rocks clasp her ankle like a bear trap with no teeth. She went down there, under the water when her first child crept out of her own. Submerged for years. Overhead, the sunlight trickles. Figures bob. Bubbles from her lungs float to meet the surface. She sees through ...

Hold the baby who burbles words you don’t know yet, words that aren’t but are puffs of air burst from fat cheeks,

Gladys went by Gigi because her granddaughter got bored halfway through learning her name and decided repeating the first letter was the way to go. At least, this is how Gladys saw it. Smoking a Virginia Slim with one hand, Gigi twirled her white hair with another red-tipped finger and watched through the window over ...

At the edge I stand while daring the glass that lies flat and shiny before me, a sheet reflecting the moon that lies bright in the night in the woods crippled with crickets behind me. Boots that tripped on rocks and twigs all through the day that I spent wading through the branches that snapped ...