My neighborhood was an urban menagerie. Snakes and snapping turtles mingled with fast–food wrappers in the creek. Tadpoles swam in street puddles after spring storms. Months later, cars left frog skins baking into the asphalt. The green anole lizard was my favorite. Something about their beady eyes and the way they fought their reflection in […]
A sound like water, beading up and falling, tap-tap-tapping fast enough that the noise becomes steady, gentle. That’s nice. It must be raining. You hope you remembered to put the bike under the porch. It continues, and the static of noise seems to disappear under this attention. Hm, did it stop? Focus roams, searching for […]
The girl is seven. The boys are older, maybe nine. From the kitchen window, she watches them try to blow the lid off a garbage can with firecrackers. They hoot and holler. Then they see a cat, and one of the boys grabs the cat and tells the others to run into the garage and […]
She died at home two days later. Her mother and father and brothers were with her. Hannah Madison, who was not present, would weep for days. Paul Hoffman insisted, his wife silent and unsteady and distraught, that his daughter be buried sans casket, deep in the ground in the manner she’d asked for. It took […]