The White Room

Imagine a room, a white room. Inside this room are all the standard amenities you would expect to find in an apartment. There is a small kitchen, a refrigerator-freezer unit, a microwave, an oven, a couch, an arm chair, a kitchen table, a coffee table, two straight back chairs, a queen-size bed, a nightstand, etc….

New Years 2022

I still remember the first time I held sparklers. It was during a joint celebration between my great uncle’s funeral and the wedding between his granddaughter and someone else. Come to think of it, he might have been by great great uncle, not that it matters much. I think it was also my great great…

The End of Freshman Year

I often wonder about the girl who committed suicide at the end of my freshman year of college. In some way or another, my thoughts wander over to that day when my college lowered its flag to half staff and two or three dozen of my classmates shuffled into the old Episcopal church on campus….

Embedded

If there’s thing I’ll never to forget, it would be what I read inside the Hiroshima Peace Museum. What I think of is “The Holocaust in Hiroshima,” a painting in the basement of that building, but even that is not quite what I imagine. The temporary survivors of the atom bomb called out for water….

July 21st: Emily

“Come on, Lily, we have to go home!” I’m tugging my daughter out of the swing set, but somehow this little four year old has a gorilla’s grip. I thought going to the park on a hot day would be a good idea. Malmont Park is decently shaded and Lily loves to swing. I always…

Cleaning

            Looking around at my grandma’s house, I’m overcome with the two pronged assault of relief and despair. After weeks of cleaning, hauling out her packaged trash and dozens of car rides to the Goodwill, the living room is finally bare. Not even a 17-foot U-Haul and the 21-foot dumpster could drag all her junk…

Function

I always think back to that line from “Inception,” the one that goes: “They don’t come here to dream, sir. They come here to wake up.” Or something like that. ~ Sometimes, it will remind me of alcohol and that horrifying way that they drink to function instead of forget ~ And other times, I…

Scarlet and Crimson

Sometimes I think about the differences between scarlet and crimson and the ways in which no one sees them. Back in college, my workshop professor handed me back a draft saying that crimson and scarlet were the same color and to change my description of a boy’s blush. I’ve never forgotten that because I looked…