Fiction

I wanted to keep packing, but everyone else was hungry and bored so they came to pick me up. We went to the Texas Roadhouse on 28th Street at 5:45 p.m. Jon wanted steak. In the waiting area, they have a window to the kitchen and below the window is a display case with a number of shelves, each displaying a few selections from each cut of beef that...

It was November sixteenth but the tree, lights, and other decorations were already setup at the funeral home. My grandfather had died of lung cancer five days earlier. I was nine.

At the visitation, I stood in the corner facing the tree, my back to everything else. I was afraid to see the body in the casket. My mother, in the middle of the room, was...

Mom rang the dinner bell at six o’clock. We took our places as she put the last, hottest dish in the middle of the table. She sat down, bowed her head, closed her eyes, and stretched out her hands. She was waiting for us to join her in prayer, but she was not waiting for Dad.

“Heavenly Father,” — she began, with a deep breath — “we thank you for –”

D...

I keep having this vision: as I’m walking down the path, I get a call that someone in my immediate family has died: either the mother who is my whole world, or the brother that I love but rarely agree with, or the sister who is pregnant, or the sister with whom I shared a womb, or the brother that I pray for every day at 10:00am. My sight doesn’t g...