Truck Stop
The A/C died with the automotive equivalent of a death rattle, a couple of clanky coughs and then breeze-free silence. I lowered the windows, and thick heat filled the cab at eighty miles an hour. I reached for the thermos I filled at Double D’s in Asheville after leaving …
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Cold Engine
Breath recedes on the windowpane. Almost March but the world shows no signs of letting up. Didn’t take the meat out of the freezer at the right time, so now we have to wait for it to thaw. One of these days I’m gonna drive this piece …
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Someplace I Didn’t Know
for Laura Trussell cw: brief mention of self-harm We were young, all done with college—either finished or dropped out. We lived on one of the long, treeless streets of Baltimore that flow down to the harbor in a three-story, five-bedroom rowhouse that the landlady had not raised the rent …
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Sonny Boy
cw: abuse Grandmother always has a crochet hook in her hand. Yellow yarn in a loop, memory beaten into muscle. The day I am born, in photos taken on cheap disposables at the hospital, blue yarn knotted into a baby blanket. When I am sixteen, the same color from the …
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Apple and the Destination Wedding
The month before my brother’s wedding, my roommate adopted a hairless cat. “Adopted” is a generous word. He obtained a cat—off Craigslist, I think—from some guy whose daughter both begged for and lost interest in the cat within two months. My roommate was kind of a hoarder. Newspapers …
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Myrmecomorphy
Fern stands in the church pew wearing her floral Sunday dress. Large peonies blossom across the fabric. Her soprano voice is absorbed by the congregation’s rendition of “As the Deer.” The chapel is full. A fan wafts sweat and rose oil in circles above the parishioners. Fern mindlessly rubs …
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A Tortilla
Tonight, I consummate. The ceremony itself is discreet, and the only people in the church’s kitchen are my mother and I. The anticipating groom the size of my child eye, only maize dough between my mother’s index finger and thumb. Instructed by a nod, I let cold water …
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West
Then she asked how long it would take to get there. As if we’d never made the trip before. “Just a bit longer,” I said, my eyes firmly on the road ahead. She kicked the back of my seat—not an accident, so I ignored it and turned the …
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