“Sorry, my grandma doesn’t have a wireless signal; she has dial up.” These are two of the saddest words in the English language, along with no signal. “No wait” said Jeff, looking at his laptop. “There are three networks showing. Must be the houses around us.” Jeff tapped the pad. [...]

My daughter’s dog glares at me from its spot in the corner of the kitchen. His nose, black and oily as the night ocean, twitches. I stuff a crust of yesterday’s leather toast in my mouth, gagging down its dryness and grab the leash.
The obese beast sets back on its haunches, going, “Oh [...]

Sometimes you walk right into the devil’s lair and don’t realize it until it’s too late. What may seem like a perfectly safe activity can turn into a nightmare that can last for years. We have all fallen into this trap. Thousands of messages have drugged us into the belief that this [...]

Chanarong crossed the border from Burma to Thailand when he was two and half years old. His mother and sister took turns carrying him on their hips. They left because the military put a bullet in back of his father’s head, and everyone was scared that they were next.
Chanarong’s only real memories of [...]

I met a proper woman in a proper pub on a Monday in Peoria. It was noon, time for lunch, and we were sitting stool to stool over very large burgers at a long mahogany bar. It curved in and out as if wind-swept and featured high stools with padded seats and backrests, all in [...]

When I was younger I stole a blank notebook from a variety store and poured myself into it’s pages. Around every entry I underlined important words, drew cartoon faces, boxed paragraphs and wrote obscure codes. Solid as a doorstop, it became a coping mechanism for life and the bigger questions like not understanding why my [...]

Buttoning your shirt, your shoulders palsied, your fingers shaking as if from fright or Parkinson’s, you remember an afternoon in August, the sun scalding, berry picking done for the day, Uncle Jack handing you a bottle as he swayed like some dark shadow on the surface of the sea, saying, “Go on, take a swig. [...]

When our pretty islands were still cheerfully divided into pretty little kingdoms, there were many little kings married to many little queens who gave birth to many little princesses. The thing all little princesses have in common is that no matter how little they are, their wishes are bigger than a grandmum’s heart. The Princess [...]

She’d spent all afternoon practicing that big toothy smile in her bathroom mirror because she believed in love at first sight. With each passing minute, that smile got just a little smaller. Any tiny jostle at her left and she’d rip the purse off her shoulder, dig inside and excavate her phone, only to stare [...]

She couldn’t believe the person she had grown into. If her mother could see her now, God rest her soul, she would be embarrassed and distraught at what her baby had made herself into.
Of course she didn’t have her mother’s passion for finding self-worth for her life. But, really, how do you find something that [...]