1.
The wife could think again, only in shorter sentences. Not that there was much to say. She’d made it past the episode, and her husband was grateful. She knew the words on the tip of his lips before he did. For a while, just after, it was silence all the time. He would glance at her or she at him; no words necessary. A blink, a nod. A kind of shorthand, she thought. Or treason, she heard him think. No one spoke. No one listened. Their new normal.

2.
“You watch too much Forensic Files,” he told his wife. “The Killer You Know.” “Murderous Neighbors.” Yada yada yada. Suspicion invaded her thinking. And she, suffering from cabin fever, her fragile mind so easily swayed. He woke at midnight to see her at their bedroom window, watching their neighbor’s Toyota Hatchback pull into his driveway. The neighbor let it idle for a good ten minutes before he turned off the engine, cut the lights. But still, he sat there, watching the neighbor’s wife’s shadow against the white blind. “I don’t blame him,” the husband thought. He, too, liked the way she moved.

3.
“I’ve always wondered how it will end for me,” the wife admitted. Now she thought she knew. He would fight for her, while she would slide into death as she had into most things. She’d learned the futility of effort-ing. She dreamt of heaven, reunited with dead beloveds—her son, her best friend. Generations of family. How stupid! she thought. Living with an atheist for twenty years had dissuaded her belief in an afterlife. She’d tried, but her son’s death at twenty-six knocked all the God right out of her.

4.
Now when the husband and wife made love they kept their eyes wide, focused on each other. “If I knew it was the last time,” her son’s lover had shared. “I would have paid more attention.” Haunted by her words, the wife paid attention. Made each time feel as if it were the last. The weight of his body, the soap scent of his skin. His hard cock a pleasure between her thighs. How well she slept after orgasm, the husband thought. La petit mort. The little death. “I want to die first,” the wife often said to him. Now it looked like she wo

Continue reading… "Three Weeks After the Seizure"

Black ice surrounded Ophelia’s Volvo SUV. Six inches of fresh snow had fallen within 24 hours on top of the 10 inches laid down two days before that; not unusual for the middle of February. She faltered as she stepped from the driver’s seat out into the darkness. The crunch of her boots on the frozen snow sounded loud in the quiet night. The wind was up and she had to reach down to the slippery ice to snatch up her wool scarf. Her courthouse badge had also fallen to the ground. She reached inside the vehicle to grab a flashlight from the seat pocket, slammed the door shut, and pointed the beam of light on the parking lot.

Continue reading… "The Honorable Ophelia Ferguson Winkle"

You and your wife are driving across Canada, along a lake you don’t know the name of with the windows down just as the sky is twilighting in the warm early autumn when you hear a bird crying. Your wife says “Pull over,” and you do. From here, you can see the wind setting up a rippling across the water, and you start to speak, but she places a palm on your chest and says, “Wait, I’ve heard this before.”

Continue reading… "Twilight Loons"

There was a stretcher waiting for me, the freakin’ brake already disengaged, I’m sure. The OB hovered over me, practically breathing up my vulva, sharpening his cesarean scalpel. The baby’s blood pressure was falling. No longer Mrs. Nice-Guy, the midwife blocked him with her hippy little body, yelling, “Push!” in my face. I looked at my husband. He was texting. The spirit to push swirled out of my body like the soul of a heaven-bound cartoon character.

Continue reading… "VP"

He turned his back to her, not in a mean way, but a natural one, because the machine beeped and he loved his coffee fresh-brewed. He loved his wife, too, but on days when she woke up cranky, and he reckoned she wanted to take it out on him—whatever it was—he put into use what he’d learned over the many years: it often pays to be a little deaf.

Continue reading… "Not a Sin"

The latest real astronauts found a collection of sea shells on the moon’s surface. They didn’t have to dig far. It was near the place where the first lunar landing was and they were gathered in a way that signaled a greeting or a gift and the astronauts wondered if the first astronauts had somehow missed this collection or if the shells had found their way to this place after that momentous visit all those years ago.

Continue reading… "The Shells on the Moon"

It’s eleven-thirty on a Tuesday night. Beth and I lift clothes out of an industrial washing machine. The wet jeans are heavy, but they feel cool against our forearms in the hot laundromat. I feel something round and foreign in the back pocket of my cutoff Levi’s. I fish a sand dollar out of the dripping denim, hold it up against the fluorescent light of the Fluff ‘N’ Fold. A palm-sized moon.

Continue reading… "Moonrise Over the Fluff ‘N’ Fold"

Largest of the white grubs, Captain Pink has a stout body. Someday, he will be chocolate brown and feed at night on trees and shrubs.

If I eat without looking, I taste heaven or surrender.

The window of a footprint doesn’t allow returning. Follow what you see.

Continue reading… "Three from Rich Ives"

“What do you and Younger Son have planned?”

“Nothing, I swear.”

Father’s raised fist was poised to eliminate Mother’s look of contempt. He paused and for a moment Mother hoped that he would see himself clearly, as he had a few times before; lower his fist, go into the house, take a six pack out of the propane powered fridge, take down his fly rod and go to the river leaving Mother wondering what would happen in the future to recreate this tableau and wishing Older Son would return from a gathering of The Brotherhood.

Continue reading… "Does God Cry?"

Cali is out of work for three weeks before it looks grim enough that she talks her sister into designing a website where for a price men can message her to do anything that they want her to do. In four days, the sisters understand that “anything they want” is predictable enough that they can have a menu with set prices. What keeps the guys coming back, and they do, is that she always says their name while she’s doing what she does, with a little lilt at the end, the way

Continue reading… "Watch Me/ Say My Name"