10 years ago, I attempted suicide. On a summer night in 2008, my parents drove me from the house where I was raised to the emergency room in an effort to save the life of their 21-year-old son. My action was built on several years of mental turmoil and anguish, of unchecked thoughts and words … More Surviving Suicide: What I’ve Learned After 10 Years
My father is wise. His wisdom has helped more people than I could ever count. When I was young, I was envious of the so many to whom he lent his ears, of the wisdom he dispensed as if it came naturally. However, when his learning was dispensed to me—it was with frequency as is … More Father’s Day, 2018
Chivalrous courtship, (in the elementary-school-aged-male sense of the word) isn’t dead, but it took a major hit during the latter half of the first decade of this millennium. It started when households began doing away with their home phones and choosing to exclusively use cellular phones. With that one decision, the family itself lost a … More Landlines: One Reason the ’90s Were the Best Decade for Elementary School Romance
You’ll reach a point where you cannot blame your mistakes on your parents’. In the early years of your second decade, you’d determined they were the reason you wore a hero’s mask over your villain face and fought for both sides. A double life, your father called it. When you were alone you spat at … More Forgiveness.
I look up from my watch and hock a wad of phlegm into the mulch trying to seem more ticked off than I am because we’d been standing in line for forty five endless minutes. I could have watched half a movie in this time. I keep thinking about and that thought makes me irritable. … More A Line at Twin Rivers
Rain would have been more fitting. Clouds. Torrential downpours. Some freak hurricane. Not this nurturing warmth that was carried in the breeze along with the songs of springtime robins. The boys were out with their father picking up new fishing poles and getting something for lunch. Patrick felt it best that Isabella, his wife, the … More Pink Bow Untied
INT – A MODEST DWELLING – LATE NIGHT The slim frame of ALEC passes a doorway where a man with grey in his beard sits facing the other direction. BARRY stirs in his chair and calls the figure he hears rustling in the other room to come speak with him. BARRY speaks, inaudibly, to the … More Measurable Time
Romance is an exercise in myth building. When a new relationship is on the rise, budding rosebuds are gathered while the wilted are buried away. We pull together moments and save artifacts and write a history for our lives as newly paired duos. We destroy, to an extent, our former lives. We become revisionist historians, … More Purporting Romance Mythically
“So, it’s a story about love?” “No. It’s a story about running.” “Oh. Tell it again. I must not have been listening.” “Way back when your mom and I used to share an apartment, I used to go running. I went nearly every day. And nearly every day, I would ask your mom to come … More A Story About Running
The old man adopted Kiddo in April at the suggestion of his eldest granddaughter. She told him a puppy would be good for him, what with a year of living alone under his belt. When she first offered the idea, just a short time after Julia went to the Lord and the walls of the … More Washed Away with the Floodwater
