It was the way he stood, ending proximity. His arms folded like a woman clutching her purse in a dark alley. You could fit a counter between us. I could be checking his coat or taking his order at dawn in a twenty-four hour truck stop. In the length of an ellipsis, I wrote a … Continue reading
As she watched Josiah repairing the wood-stove, she nearly wondered aloud. What the hell was she doing? Why come back here? She had no good answer for that; or, more accurately, the answer didn’t seem enough. This baby. Josie was once almost her father-in-law, but she had walked out on his son and this baby … Continue reading
A father’s ashes in a blue box on the vanity. Bits of the last heartbreak handwritten on a window. A garden gone reckless for the winter. My secrets are not kept in the usual places. Continue reading
Before the beautiful assistant climbs into the box, I leave, afraid he will forget the rest. Continue reading
Persephone Buried, she lost sight of the surface and forgot the horizon. After a time, she stopped standing in the narrow tunnels, hoping for a cusp of light. She took her lovers without the promise of morning. Dark and full of fleeting want, she plucked them only for memory and let them fade, and when … Continue reading
He asks for a secret. I tell him there is a quiet scar on my left forearm from an iron I shouldn’t have touched and a small freckle on my bottom lip that I drag beneath my teeth whenever I worry. Continue reading
Beautiful Cassandra, I’m going to ask you not to look at the myth— no matter how they tell it, it doesn’t end well for you. Mute prophecy a moment. The history of birdsong is also yours. Remember, it was a heron, not a god, that made sense of chaos. Let its cadence sway you now … Continue reading
If you ever lived in a desert as a child you know that every so often you miss it. Not for its expanse of night sky, the way the stars never surrender to the dark while you lay on the hood of your grandmother’s Impala, and not for the lizards you hunted with your sister … Continue reading
Continued from Day 99 of 35: He took them apart, stripped them to their gears, cleaned and reassembled, and still, the ornate French mantel clock and the cuckoo were a millisecond apart, and the Grandfather was always a full tick-tock behind—its chime the last to announce the passing hour. I came home once and slept … Continue reading
Amber had left Jimmy, had left all of them, really, after the doctor’s pumped his stomach and announced that he would live. She couldn’t face anyone. She was lost in a sadness that came within minutes of relief. She no longer knew what to do. She could not love him enough to make him happy, … Continue reading
WITHIN ARE PIECES OF ME
Administrative Consulting
Thoughts on parenting, teaching, and faith.
adoption, foster care, and autism
TBI S-O-S! Restoring a Sense-Of-Self after Brain Injury and Concussion
The Blessings of Being a Woman of God
Have some fire. Be unstoppable. Be a force of nature.
My Site. That looks like a Blog, but it's a site to organize the content. Also a central portal for my stuff and contact information.
Experiencing God on the Journey with Special Needs
A fine WordPress.com site
Adventures of a socially-inept Aspie girl
an independent, international literary magazine
Living on the Edge of the Sagebrush Ocean
Official Author site for Laurie McDaniel
simply
Empowering wannabe do-it-yourselfers one project at a time
Untempered Glass 