The movie house was not nearly as crowded as Alice had hoped it would be. She glancedaround at the few clusters of people littering the lobby. Some stood near the snack and popcorncounter; others hovered across from the ushers, waiting for the okay to head to their...
We never had one when I was a kid because Mum was British. Well, my grandparents were British, Mum was born in Charleston, South Carolina. But she picked up the accent at home and worked hard not to lose it. She would say things like loo, and carpark, and petrol. So,...
“Oprah invited you for tea.” “Again?” I roll down my waistband. “That’s four invites this month.” Kendra places the syringe horizontal between her teeth so her hands are free to heat the cooker. “Five if you count Montecito.” She takes the syringe out of her...
She rested at an empty table in the restaurant. Her purchases propped across from her as if they were company. Stranger’s conversations swirled around her with excitement of the season and she heard the speakers overhead. Let her heart be light. It had been four...
“Is Maith An Scéalaí An Aimsir.” “Time is a good storyteller.” -Irish Proverb I watched in fascination as Mirai Enog engaged in a tug of war with her last breath, a horrible wheezing sound accompanying the two of us. The stubborn woman she was, she refused to concede...
Hot and sweaty, Cousin Kieran clings to my body, as we mash together. He can barely hold on to me as I have no fat. “No love handles,” as he puts it. He never gave me a second glance all those years at family holiday parties, but now, I’m so slim that my breasts...
“I am in a sea of wonders; I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not confess to myown soul.” - Bram Stoker, Dracula We should have stayed on land. Thomas and I balance wide-legged on the deck as the ocean churns against the ferry and slap, slap, slaps...
Los Angeles never slept, not really. Its neon pulse kept beating across the cracked sidewalks of Figueroa, in the dead glow of streetlights, in the humming vibrations of cars slowing down just long enough to negotiate, watch, or judge. It was a city built on...
A neon sign blinking “BAR” hung outside but everyone called it the Oak Room. Patrons professed this started as a joke, an irony, a way of saying the old joint in no way resembled The Plaza. Yet a faded grandeur pervaded. Perhaps customers of an earlier era coined the...
She is soaring through the woods, chapped goat feet noiseless over the carpet of pine needles. Doe eyes and pink cheeks, dreadfully wise, a fiery glowing Atalanta. That is how I remember Manisha. Carrying my baby brother securely in her arms as she scrambles up...