I stumble across the sale rack of men’s dress shirts and almost robotic-like, am drawn to the XXL. $11.99 for name brand, men’s shirts. Not bad. Bright, bold colors, I knew my dad would look good in these. It had been a Space-Mountain-year. You know…The kind that straps you in and unvoluntarily spins you up and […]

The earth burned hot, like fire beneath my feet, as I gazed up to what was four massive beings. Faces, like giants, staring outward. Me, a child, sat in the dry air, with a big sky sprawling open around me. People crowded. The faces of our past sat poignant. Four presidents chiseled into rock. Like the […]

A pile of gray fur lay tucked in our blackberry bushes. We knew what had happened, simply by circumstantial evidence. The night before, a coyote was pacing our property. Our neighbor said her cat was mangled, scraped and scarred, but when she came outside at the sound of it all, the coyote ran off. Her cat […]

I dropped those newborns on his lap, like a brightly wrapped, present to a king. He sat, quiet. Holding them. Or looked up at me as if saying, “Again?”, half-smiling. It didn’t matter if the baby was Caucasian, Hispanic, Samoan, or African American. This strong man, with thick, calloused hands, and a hat that covered his […]

Have you ever seen those game shows? The ones where people are crammed in see-through booths, a switch is flicked, air blows, then the contestant grabs all the fying money they can, stuffing it anywhere they are able? Or an Easter egg hunt? Or black Friday? People get plowed over, so the hunters can grab their […]

Our fruit trees didn’t produce last year. It was like, in the middle of a nationwide pandemic, the trees blossomed, in anticipation of fruit, but then remained still… The flowers wide open, eventually browned, then fell to the ground. We didn’t know what was happening. For over a dozen years, our trees have produced crops; apples, […]