July Fourth Meditation on Love
It was July Fourth and early enough that most people were still sleeping in their beds unless they’d decided to get up to stake out a spot at a local picnic ground for their family’s festivities, spreading out the blanket or assembling the portable barbecue. It was quiet. Even the cats that usually jump into […]
Ghosts: Sequel 1
My mouth dropped. Never had I expected her to utter those words. “Yes,” I said, feeling an immediate kinship with a woman who was standing in front of me on the cement pavement at the bottom of the driveway of my old house where I had raised my children and where she now lived. “When […]
Ode to Aunt Elsie
I look at the walls of your town house where you lived for more than forty years and died after your hundredth birthday just as you predicted you would. I’m looking at your walls, family photographs of children and grandchildren, obligatory framed pictures of you and your husband from a marriage you endured; paintings of […]
Saguaro
Not the freaking desert, my father would rather spend his day at the beach, my mother, always in charge of food, packed egg sandwiches and a tall thermos, passed an insulated plaid bag to my uncle who cursed, took the sac anyway, and my two aunts, always ahead of the game, one negotiating rocks with […]
Whippoorwill
I looked for you riding the down escalator on my way to the bargain table at Alexander’s where you used to take me to find a dress in a girl’s 10 chubby–but I’m no longer that size and I could not find you On some days your eyes turned green, other times hazel like Salvador […]