looking for my life in 26 letters

Part I- Jump Starter The smiling Amazon box on my porch blocked the door. I pushed the storm door again, but the package was heavy - too heavy for the door to budge. I turned, walked through my small house to the kitchen. I grabbed the trash to throw in the bin as I went through...

The Second Most Important Thing   Number 1: The Decision He’s at work, I rationalized. He’ll never know.  My upper lip was pushed in, my lower incisors pressing it into their opposite uppers. Decision made, I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.  I have to do it.  I struggled to stand. The...

The first sip of scotch hits the palate like Sherman’s March and finishes with shock and awe. I wouldn’t know about the second sip. I have no taste for total warfare.    Scotch is the smirk of Ares surveying the charred, smoldering remnants of scorched earth. It is the bitter fire of Hephaestus -  fires hot...

The snowy shroud lay heavily on the ground and stones. It resisted our encroachment. Snow permeated our shoes, saturated our socks, and burned our feet. I didn’t own winter boots, but Linda - Linda was only 20 miles from the home of her youth. Linda knew better. Five months after her birth, seventeen snowy inches blanketed...

Booger Eater: for my friend Keith on his birthday No one wants to admit it, he told me later, but everyone would eat a booger for a million dollars. The question isn’t if you would eat a booger, but how little you would take to do so.   Part I Keith is an Eastern Orthodox priest...

Part I When there was a knock at the door, I hoped it was you. I wanted it to be you.  Your voice was low, almost inaudible.   I held the phone and your words close.   You could have knocked at my door. Why didn’t you? I asked, knowing the answer. We both knew the...

Common Denominator   Chapter 1: Andrea I used to think that I was the common denominator, but I was wrong.   Chapter 2: Wynton We were not unacquainted.   He was a peripheral friend of my friends, but I never knew how. He was two years ahead and studying music.    On a campus of only...

Part I Once I wrote to you about looking for seashells. I was five, perhaps six, little enough that I left no footprints on the saturated sand of the beach drift.     No swimming for 30 minutes, my mother would tell us. And so, after eating peanut butter and grape jelly soaked Wonder Bread, I looked...

but i did   Part I I slide open the shower door and slip in. “Excuse me, good sir. I’ll only be a minute.” I say with exaggerated politeness tapping you on the chest and standing close enough to make you step back and cede prime shower territory.    I reach around you, still deliberately close....