If only the wind had leaned in with a whisper, instead of slamming the door like a judge. If only the tea had steeped a little longer, and t...

The woman lies alone in the field— you’ve seen the painting—peering over the horizon. The gray, weathered house looms behind her, overwhelms...

Four days before Christmas,           he died. She wrapped herself           in silence. No need for that constant stream of one-sided conve...

We are becoming a police state, says HCR, who lives across the river. Apparently, she never sleeps. Her essays, cited thoroughly —to rub met...

Methodist Social Services sends mention my maternal grandmother suffered with arthritis, died of diverticulitis, but there is nothing more. ...

My impatient adolescent brain thought Alexander the Great got it right when he severed the Gordian knot with one slash. I spent many years t...

No one will pause at the headline to the obituary I won’t have, the kind you don’t have to buy, written before you die. Reporters actually i...

wasn’t a question asked in my family, and so remained unanswered. Adults avoided emotional outbursts; salt tossed over a shoulder took care ...

When my late neighbor moved from Southern California to Southern New England, she was a new widow. She told, repeatedly, stories of her youn...

It's not just the pretty words or how he seems to read her heart; it’s the way he kisses her wedding ring, says he loves her more than l...

Old and sway-backed, starved and abused, two horses sold for meat were bought and saved by my compassionate friend. Let loose to graze in ve...

It wanted to stand on its own, that straw scarecrow with square pink patches sewn into its cheeks to resemble rosy mirth. It never failed to...

I see him again in my dreams at a Christmas party. He is the center, he commands as the host, quietly in a white tie, his shoes touch the po...

I will be forgotten. Tonight is practice, for in this darkness, vanity has no supply. I slip down and dissolve, forgetting in mind, remember...

You may be ready to let go before they are—or it could be the other way around. It wasn't you who chose catheter and cotton smock, IV an...

I multiply weightless suns on ocean horizons: some watery as tears, some sticky as blood. My sable brush says come nearer, rose tone. Come b...

The cats are here between me and the window because it is a warm sunny afternoon and they will not let me work. They bathe themselves. They ...

I come from sagebrush where rattlesnakes coil in shade away from the mid-day sun. I come from rocks where chukars call an echo across fossi...

I wasn’t sure I liked it, the A-framed skirt of that prom dress with its yellow roses, its layer of creamy chiffon. The sash showcased the t...

As the sun sets over the bleak cemetery One of its rays rests upon an old man Slumped on a park bench The octogenarian nods in response to t...