I finished the book, entranced by the personal meaning I gathered from the story. He wrote with passion, and I understood why he had become successful, if not why that success led him to feel guilty for his loss. He sought treatment for grief, but what he perceived of as grief, seemed to me to [...]
I do not know why I was so uncomfortable with our first meeting. From his intake record, I knew he had requested a grief counselor. The service assigned new patients based on a system that could have paired him with any of my partners. Most of our cases involved grief counseling; death, divorce, retirement, and [...]
He said she couldn’t take his truck, but never imagined it would become his home. He didn’t blame her. He thought there were two types of people in this world, and it had nothing to do with pessimism and optimism. It was all about blame. People either took credit, or blamed someone else when things [...]
My toes refuse to translate the nightmares between them. I dig deeper in sand, leaving cells penetrated by my own visions. My body is carried to distant people. Do they speak the language of my dreams? Can they see my visions if they are blind? Do they hear the crackle of the fires that burned [...]
¶ Zingo
They ran in winter, swam in summer and watched in spring and autumn. Always there was the ball. It wasn’t the rain that kept people inside, he thought, it was the white. On white days he stayed home, shifting lamps and testing new bulbs. Zingo was the companion who pulled him out and away for [...]
Damp sand speckled blank parchment as the horse galloped past her silent retreat. She had never been one of those girls to request a pony for Christmas. Well, she did ask for one when she was nine, the year all her friends did the same, but she never really wanted one. That was around [...]
¶ Baptism
A chair gouged the stone floor and a man dashed after the fisherman. Someone silenced the music and the barista stood frozen, stirring. A tide of voices floated to the back of the cafe as gossip turned to speculation. The man in dripping waders had gulped a single word and disappeared. Now a woman in [...]