The path was often muddy, you had to use roots for steps, and it led us out of the warm light that the barn breathed out.

I nodded, looked out over the city, and thought that what Jake had just said was exactly what was wrong with white people.

A few days ago, colleagues at a work function had been standing in a circle. He was pallid-work-him glass in hand, standing to one side.

I miss the parts where my siblings and I would pile into my parents’ bed on the weekend, my father still half asleep and my mother long awaken.

Mrs. Greene just shakes her head. For a moment, she seems about to speak, to demand something again—

The girl walks towards the waves by herself, still clutching the packet of biscuits, the water a little above her anklets.

Outside, noise from the street reminded Dave that life existed beyond his apartment.

I stub the butt of my cigarette out and stare blankly at the too trimmed row of bushes bordering our backyard. Michigan is chilly in October. I go inside.

The berries they usually found in wild abundance failed to materialize. At first the stories struck her as apocryphal. Bears were reportedly ripping...

Kathleen was the last appointment of the day. Being of Irish ancestry, I recognized that her ancestors came from the same place.

Being civically engaged, she began encouraging him to offer marionettes to charity events, fund raisers, parties. They began their marriage this way and the practice continued for years.

Sarah’s mother kissed her on the forehead. “I hadn’t really thought about it.

When Binoy the male nurse joined, Maami shifted with her grandkids and forgot Maama completely. Once, when she accidentally confronted her now forty-kilo husband in the corridor

The only thing you could never bear about your mother was that she’d always been a terrible liar, an atrociously unconvincing one. She’d only half-look..

S is confusing my count of how many wrinkles I have found under my eyes when I smile. He sits at the edge of the bathtub, unbothered about lines, creases, or drooping at the corners of the mouth. I continue with the lined-up bottles of toners and essences and serums...

At home, he refused to drink his milk. I tried different kinds: organic, fat-free, almond. I studied the pamphlet, which advised against force-feeding, so I made him a milk bath and soaked him for several days.

My sister was supposed to come swing with me. She could push me so high that I would forget there was a world below awaiting my return. She coaxed me to jump every time.

Kill or be killed here in this foreign land, he fires at the first silhouette he spies through the sights of his Kalashnikov.

He carried his leather briefcase as always. It was the one we bought for Father’s Day and the only one he would ever own.

I raise my hand as if to slap his left cheek and the boy winces. A tinge of regret travels from my palm up to my headache. Both the boy’s smile and the cat simultaneously fall to the ground.

I don’t know how this happened; I woke up and found myself like this. I have only just now begun to devote thought to why I am in this state really. My initial waking thoughts were prostrate and bowed to the immense pain of cracking open my oophorm eyes.

She drew their faces in greater detail on the opposite page, as if she had severed and separated their heads.