A shirt is a shirt, right?  Taylor has a genius for buying shirts.  I don’t know where she shops.  I wish I could choose words like Taylor chooses shirts.  Then we could talk about things that count, like why we can fight.  Friends for three decades.  Sometimes we get so hurt and so mad at…

Little did they know that sending John to town would end in heartbreak. It was already noon when John insisted on making the trip. He wanted to help his grandparents, despite their repeated warnings. “Transport from town isn’t as reliable here as it is in KwaMashu,” Grandpa explained. “You might struggle to get back before…

As the dog days of summer came to an end, Sloane felt sad because it meant she would have to go back to school soon. Going back to school meant that the long summer days that she spent at the pool were coming to an end, and she would have to spend the next nine…

I watched the boys playing outside in the snow on the sidewalk as I washed the glass over and over in my hand.  They had built a gigantic snowman and were now making snowballs to throw at each other.  I couldn’t help but smile. I shook my head and put the glass back in its…

Oh, please, oh please, Penelope. Drink up, my little angel. You are the only thing that makes me want to get out of bed. If it weren’t for you, I’d be counting the tiny dust particles floating in the sunbeam through the window. You kept me from counting the threads in my sheets to make…

 Present day (setting in a hospital somewhere in Dhaka) Today she saw blood on my pillow. “Ammi, I know they will save you.” She whispered in a voice even more fragile than my own condition.  I smiled and coughed again with blood – and she knew that I was going to die soon. I still…

There was a knock at the door, and Artie found a UPS box sitting on his No One’s Home Went Fishing door mat. He retrieved it and went back to his recliner. The ball game was blearing a fresh home run for the other team, and Artie just shook his head in disgust. Reaching for…

The website had promised wind in your hair. Sara had interpreted this loosely, given that she’d be wearing a helmet, but she’d allowed herself the fantasy anyway: sun-warmed roads, the glitter of the Mediterranean, and herself looking effortlessly continental, like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, gamine and windswept. People back home would be unbearable about…

September 9, 1968.  The Barn Whisper’s new stall has been ready for a night and a day. The oat straw, golden in the afternoon light, is fluffed a foot deep and banked deeper still on the sides of the tie stall. The water bucket is full and clipped, just so, in the manger. The manger…